Often, the first thing an American child is taught about reading and language is that there are 26 letters of the alphabet. This, of course, is a lie—there are actually 52 letters of the English alphabet split into two categories: capital versions of each letter (ABC) and lowercase versions of each letter (abc).
Why does every letter have two versions? It's a long story that has to do with the history of paper, writing, God, and Gutenberg. The TL;DR of that history (which you can find at the end of this article) is that lowercase letters are considered the default for writing and are capitalized to show emphasis.
So what needs to be emphasized in English? For historical reasons alluded to above, every sentence, line of poetry, and line of dialogue must start with a capital letter.¹ This is such an important rule that proper sentences can never start with a digit since there aren't capital numbers.²
Other than the starts of sentences? Proper names, initial letters, and isolated letters get capitalized.
Why does every letter have two versions? It's a long story that has to do with the history of paper, writing, God, and Gutenberg. The TL;DR of that history (which you can find at the end of this article) is that lowercase letters are considered the default for writing and are capitalized to show emphasis.
So what needs to be emphasized in English? For historical reasons alluded to above, every sentence, line of poetry, and line of dialogue must start with a capital letter.¹ This is such an important rule that proper sentences can never start with a digit since there aren't capital numbers.²
Other than the starts of sentences? Proper names, initial letters, and isolated letters get capitalized.
When do I use capital letters?
- at the start of every new sentence, line of poetry, line of dialogue, and media title
- for every word in a proper name, formal title, or epithet (minus function words)
- eponyms (only when they are used as tributes)
- English initialisms and acronyms
- the pronoun I and other single letters (except the article a)
Do not use capital letters for:
- seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter)
- initialisms of foreign words
- emphasis (especially to represent shouting)
- classes, clubs, or disciplines, except languages (English) or specific groups (Frederick High Varsity Girls Basketball)
Capitalizing Proper Names
Nouns can be classified in five ways: by case, by number, by gender, by tangibility, and by specificity. The last quality in this list—specificity—comes in two forms. A common noun is not a specific person, place, object, or concept, and a proper noun is a specific person, place, object, or concept. Proper nouns are capitalized to distinguish them from common nouns.
common |
Proper |
park |
Central Park |
conflict |
World War II |
artist |
Salvador Dali |
tissue |
Kleenex |
restaurant |
Taco Bell |
cowboy hat |
Stetson |
death |
Death |
novel |
The Catcher in the Rye |
monarch |
King Alexander the Great |
Take a closer look at those last five examples, as each looks at a special type of proper name.
PROPER ADJECTIVES: restaurant vs. Taco Bell
Brand names are specific names, which means they are proper nouns and get capitalized. However, brands can also describe their product: I think that Taco Bell burrito upset my stomach. In this example, burrito is the noun, and Taco Bell is describing it. This is called a proper adjective, an adjective that is based off a preexisting proper noun. Common proper adjectives include not only brand names but also nations (Canadian hockey, Mexican food), ethnicities (Catholic priest, Jewish holiday), and sociocultural movements (Baroque era, Communist revolution).
EPONYMS: cowboy hat vs. Stetson
Western settlers had it rough. Supplies were far, the land was hard to work, and the caps, derbies, and top hats popular out East were no match for the sun of the Western plains. This inspired a milliner named John B. Stetson to create a wide-brimmed leather hat based off the Mexican sombrero in 1865. While Stetson named his hat "The Boss of the Plains" and folks today know it as a cowboy hat, those living in the Old West referred to them as Stetsons after their inventor. This is an eponym, something that takes its name from a person or location.
While eponyms are similar to brand names, the rules around them aren't as clear-cut. Brands are always capitalized, but eponyms are only sometimes capitalized. For example, I could order a martini, a manhattan, and some french fries at the bar all without using a capital letter, but if I want to also get a Rob Roy and an Arnold Palmer for the designated driver, I've got capitals galore. All four drinks are eponyms, but only two get capitalized.
The rule here is reference: eponyms are not capitalized when the reference to the person or place isn't intended, and they are capitalized when a tribute is intended. A martini and manhattan aren't really associated with their places of origin³ (same with french fries, which were invented in Belgium). A Rob Roy and Arnold Palmer, however, are still closely associated with the originators of the drink, so they get capitalized. When in doubt with eponyms, consult a dictionary.⁴
While eponyms are similar to brand names, the rules around them aren't as clear-cut. Brands are always capitalized, but eponyms are only sometimes capitalized. For example, I could order a martini, a manhattan, and some french fries at the bar all without using a capital letter, but if I want to also get a Rob Roy and an Arnold Palmer for the designated driver, I've got capitals galore. All four drinks are eponyms, but only two get capitalized.
The rule here is reference: eponyms are not capitalized when the reference to the person or place isn't intended, and they are capitalized when a tribute is intended. A martini and manhattan aren't really associated with their places of origin³ (same with french fries, which were invented in Belgium). A Rob Roy and Arnold Palmer, however, are still closely associated with the originators of the drink, so they get capitalized. When in doubt with eponyms, consult a dictionary.⁴
PERSONIFICATION: death vs. Death
Death may be the best example of a common noun. It's the one common experience shared by everything in the universe. Yet not even death can escape the insidious grasp of capitalization. Take a look at "Holy Sonnet X" by John Donne:
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Donne capitalizes the word death three times... and doesn't capitalize it once. What gives?
In this poem, Death has been personified by Donne. Personification is taking an animal, object, or concept and giving it human qualities. In the first line, Donne tells death to not be proud, an emotion felt by a human. In line 3, Donne uses the personal pronoun thou to refer to someone, and in line 4, we see that said person is Death. In the last line, Donne says that "Death shall die," something that happens to mortal beings but not concepts.
And what about the word death at the start of the last line? By not capitalizing it, Donne is showing that the concept of death—the common noun—won't exist, which is different than Death the Person.
Death (and lots of other concepts, for that matter) has been personified in literature throughout the centuries. Milton's done it. Dickinson's done it. DC Comics has done it. And every time death becomes a person, Death gets a capital letter.
In this poem, Death has been personified by Donne. Personification is taking an animal, object, or concept and giving it human qualities. In the first line, Donne tells death to not be proud, an emotion felt by a human. In line 3, Donne uses the personal pronoun thou to refer to someone, and in line 4, we see that said person is Death. In the last line, Donne says that "Death shall die," something that happens to mortal beings but not concepts.
And what about the word death at the start of the last line? By not capitalizing it, Donne is showing that the concept of death—the common noun—won't exist, which is different than Death the Person.
Death (and lots of other concepts, for that matter) has been personified in literature throughout the centuries. Milton's done it. Dickinson's done it. DC Comics has done it. And every time death becomes a person, Death gets a capital letter.
MEDIA TITLES: novel vs. The Catcher in the Rye
The title of a book, poem, short story, article, song, album, film, television series, video game, and other published writing gets capitalized. However, unlike most proper nouns, not everything gets capitalized. Look at the example: only one of the thes is capitalized in The Catcher in the Rye.
Other than pronouns, function words are usually not capitalized in titles. In this case, function words include articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so), prepositions, and particles (short words added to verbs to make them phrasal, infinitive, negative, or imperative). This explains why the preposition in and the last article the are not capitalized in The Catcher in the Rye.
That still doesn't explain why the first the is capitalized when it's also a function word. The exception to this convention is that the first word of a title is always capitalized, whether it's a particle or not.
These rules don't just cover primary titles but also subtitles (secondary titles meant to clarify the main title or a work) and section titles that divide different sections of a work (which are sometimes called subheads).
Other than pronouns, function words are usually not capitalized in titles. In this case, function words include articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so), prepositions, and particles (short words added to verbs to make them phrasal, infinitive, negative, or imperative). This explains why the preposition in and the last article the are not capitalized in The Catcher in the Rye.
That still doesn't explain why the first the is capitalized when it's also a function word. The exception to this convention is that the first word of a title is always capitalized, whether it's a particle or not.
These rules don't just cover primary titles but also subtitles (secondary titles meant to clarify the main title or a work) and section titles that divide different sections of a work (which are sometimes called subheads).
FORMAL TITLES: monarch vs. King Alexander the Great
Like most names, Alexander is capitalized, but it is also joined by something else that is always capitalized: formal titles. Formal titles include honorifics like Doctor, Miss, Professor, Duke, Pope, and yes, King.
Formal titles also include job qualifications like Esquire, Quarterback, and Assistant Manager. Such titles follow book title rules and do not capitalize function words: Director of Communications, Secretary of the Interior, Chairman of the Board.
This also goes for epithets, which are descriptive nicknames that usually follow a name the same way a formal title does: Kermit the Frog, Vlad the Impaler, Jesus of Nazareth, Winnie the Pooh, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and, of course, Alexander the Great.
However, formal titles are only capitalized when attached to a proper name: the title of president wouldn't be capitalized in Look, the president is swimming naked in river! but it would be in Look, President John Quincy Adams is swimming naked in the river!⁵ Formal titles even keep their capitals when abbreviated, like in Dr., St., Mr., Ms., Mrs., and Mx.⁶
Speaking of abbreviations...
Formal titles also include job qualifications like Esquire, Quarterback, and Assistant Manager. Such titles follow book title rules and do not capitalize function words: Director of Communications, Secretary of the Interior, Chairman of the Board.
This also goes for epithets, which are descriptive nicknames that usually follow a name the same way a formal title does: Kermit the Frog, Vlad the Impaler, Jesus of Nazareth, Winnie the Pooh, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and, of course, Alexander the Great.
However, formal titles are only capitalized when attached to a proper name: the title of president wouldn't be capitalized in Look, the president is swimming naked in river! but it would be in Look, President John Quincy Adams is swimming naked in the river!⁵ Formal titles even keep their capitals when abbreviated, like in Dr., St., Mr., Ms., Mrs., and Mx.⁶
Speaking of abbreviations...
Capitalizing Intialisms
Initialisms are kind of like abbreviations because one takes a word and shortens it. However, abbreviations are where a single word is shortened; initialisms are where a phrase is shortened to just its initial letters.⁷ Initialisms are normally pronounced as individual letters, but initialisms also include acronyms, which are pronounced as a single word.
initialism |
what it means |
acronym |
what it means |
AKA |
also known as |
AIDS |
acquired immune deficiency syndrome |
BYOB |
bring your own bottle |
AWOL |
absent without leave |
CCTV |
closed-circuit television |
CAPTCHA |
Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart |
DIY |
do it yourself |
FOMO |
fear of missing out |
NFL |
National Football League |
NATO |
North Atlantic Treaty Organization |
OMG |
Oh my God! |
POTUS |
President of the United States |
SUV |
sport utility vehicle |
YOLO |
you only live once |
VIP |
very important person |
ZIP Code |
zone improvement plan code |
Notice that initialisms have two distinguishing features that make them different from abbreviations, both of which have exceptions. Initialisms are always in all caps, and initialisms do not use periods.
EXCEPTION 1: Function Words in Initialisms
Like with proper names, function words are excluded and not capitalized in initialisms. For example, the MMORPG League of Legends shortens to LoL, the Department of Defense is often shortened to DoD, and Picture in Picture mode appears as a PiP button on some remotes. A common exception to this is and, which is usually switched out for an ampersand rather than a lowercase a: Bed and Breakfast = B&B; research and development = R&D; the candy made by Mars and Murray = M&M.⁸
Acronyms are a bit looser when it comes to function words and are either dropped if they don't help make a word (e.g., The National Aeronautics and Space Administration = NASA) or they are included and capitalized if they are needed (e.g., Greatest of All Time = GOAT). To make acronyms work, sometimes more than just the first letter of a word is included (e.g., Taxpayer Bill of Rights = TABOR). Some acronyms even lose their capitalization over time and just become a common word (e.g., Sound Navigation and Ranging = SONAR, which is now just spelled as sonar).⁹
Acronyms are a bit looser when it comes to function words and are either dropped if they don't help make a word (e.g., The National Aeronautics and Space Administration = NASA) or they are included and capitalized if they are needed (e.g., Greatest of All Time = GOAT). To make acronyms work, sometimes more than just the first letter of a word is included (e.g., Taxpayer Bill of Rights = TABOR). Some acronyms even lose their capitalization over time and just become a common word (e.g., Sound Navigation and Ranging = SONAR, which is now just spelled as sonar).⁹
EXCEPTION 2: The Initials of People
An entire person's name reduced to just its initial letters works just like any other initialism (e.g., Martin Luther King = MLK; Lyndon Baines Johnson = LBJ). However, if only part of a name is initialized, the initials are capitalized and followed by a period and a space (e.g., Elwyn Brooks White = E. B. White, George Raymond Richard Martin = George R. R. Martin).
EXCEPTION 3: Initialisms of Foreign Phrases
When phrases that are not in English and that are not capitalized are used, they remain lowercase and get periods without spaces. However, if the words in the original phrase are capitalized—even if it's only one of the words—then all the letters are capitalized with periods like a normal initialism. This is primarily something that happens with Latin phrases.
phrase |
initialism |
meaning |
ante/post meridiem |
a.m. / p.m. |
before/after midday |
Curriculum Vitae |
CV |
"life's course" (resume) |
exempli gratia |
e.g. |
for example |
et alia |
et al. |
and others (used in citation) |
et cetera |
etc. |
and so on |
id est |
i.e. |
that is to say |
Medicinae Doctor |
MD |
Doctor of Medicine |
Nota bene |
NB |
note well (goes before a sidenote) |
Philosophiae Doctor |
PhD |
Doctor of Philosophy |
Répondez s'il vous plaît |
RSVP |
reply if you want to join |
versus |
v. (legal) / vs. (non-legal) |
against the party of |
Occasionally, a lowercase foreign phrase will become capitalized and lose its periods when English speakers swap out the foreign words for English words with similar initial letters. This is how r.i.p. (requiescant in pace) became RIP (rest in peace) and how p.s. (post scriptum) became PS (postscript). Once this swap happens, the initalisms start following English word conventions.
Capitalizing Lonely Letters
Letters also need to be capitalized if they are all by themselves, with the exception of the article a (as in a capital letter). This is why the pronoun I is always capitalized, as are grades (I got all A's this semester), music notes (play a B flat), and idioms (mind your P's and Q's; it fits to a T).
The addition of a single letter to another word with a hyphen using a hyphen also requires that single letter to be capitalized (e.g., A-bomb, C-section, K-pop, T-shirt, U-boat). This is true even with many hyphens, which are used to indicate the spelling out of a word: I don't want my dog Smuckers to know that I'm giving him a B-A-T-H before I take him to the V-E-T.
The only time a single letter isn't capitalized is when it is representing itself as a letter: Pterodactyl starts with a p, not a t. Notice that in this case, the letter is italicized the same way a word representing itself is always italicized.
The addition of a single letter to another word with a hyphen using a hyphen also requires that single letter to be capitalized (e.g., A-bomb, C-section, K-pop, T-shirt, U-boat). This is true even with many hyphens, which are used to indicate the spelling out of a word: I don't want my dog Smuckers to know that I'm giving him a B-A-T-H before I take him to the V-E-T.
The only time a single letter isn't capitalized is when it is representing itself as a letter: Pterodactyl starts with a p, not a t. Notice that in this case, the letter is italicized the same way a word representing itself is always italicized.
QUESTION: What about using capital letters for emphasis?
Don't do it.
Using ALL CAPS (which is also referred to as block script) is frequently used in digital communications to create emphasis or to indicate words that are shouted. The reason for this is that the proper methods of emphasis—bold, italic, and underline—are not present in a message board or text message editor. However, emphatics are available for formal writing via word processors. Unless you are specifically replicating all caps in the context of an online or text conversation, do not use all caps in formal writing. Other than following conventions, this makes sure an acronym is never mistaken for an emphasized word.
Using ALL CAPS (which is also referred to as block script) is frequently used in digital communications to create emphasis or to indicate words that are shouted. The reason for this is that the proper methods of emphasis—bold, italic, and underline—are not present in a message board or text message editor. However, emphatics are available for formal writing via word processors. Unless you are specifically replicating all caps in the context of an online or text conversation, do not use all caps in formal writing. Other than following conventions, this makes sure an acronym is never mistaken for an emphasized word.
OK, but why do we even have capital letters?
All letters in English used to be what we now refer to as capital letters, which use large curves and straight lines.
The geometry of these letters came as a result of how the progenitors of the English alphabet--the Phonecians, Greeks, and Romans—wrote words down. They would take a sharpened stick called a stylus or a stiff bird feather called a quill, dip the tip in a bunch of ashes mixed with water or oil (called lampblack), and etch letters on rough paper made from pressed grasses called papyrus, thick leather hides, clay tablets, or wood covered in a thin layer of beeswax. These materials were tough to work with, so letters needed easy shapes to reproduce. Thus these letters, referred to as majuscule script, were built for clarity.
So if it was called majuscule script, why do we call them "capital letters" (besides the fact that a good number of modern Americans wouldn't be able to pronounce, let alone spell, majuscule)? Ancient writers started to get fancy with some of their writing, and one way they did this was to take the first letter of a page or paragraph and make it larger than the rest and decorated. Since these letters occurred at the head of a section of writing, they were called capitals (today, they are called drop caps or versals).
During this time, the Egyptian city of Alexandria was considered the center of knowledge and learning for the Western world. Part of this was due to the Great Library of Alexandria, which housed 400,000 books at its height. The sheer volume of works in the Great Library turned Alexandria into the primary manufacturer and exporter of papyrus around the ancient world.
Why papyrus? Think of the last thing you wrote—how many times did you make a mistake that you had to retype or erase and rewrite? For the ancients, they had to toss the writing and start over again every time that happened. Papyrus was the most cost-effective surface to write on when every word had to be handwritten, and every Mediterranean country was primarily using papyrus to write by the time of the Roman unification.
Everything changed, however, when Alexandria started to fall on hard times. The Diaspora Revolt of 115 CE destroyed massive sections of the city and interrupted the production of papyrus, which led to an empire-wide shortage. A similar shortage occurred in 215 CE after Emperor Caracalla culled all the young men in the city because their jokes about him hurt his feelings. In 365 CE, Alexandria was yet again devastated, this time by a tsunami caused by the Great Crete Earthquake, the largest earthquake of the ancient world.
All these supply chain disruptions motivated Rome to look for alternatives to papyrus. They knew the best alternative would be thin sheets of goat and sheepskin—it had been around for centuries and was used by the ancient Greeks and Hebrews. However, it was very expensive to produce because it had to be cleaned, dehaired, stretched, and scraped.
These issues were solved by the Greek city of Pergamon when they started to soak skins in a lime solution to clean and dehair them, which was quicker, cheaper, and lasted longer than the liquor solutions that had been previously used for centuries. This new type of writing surface was called parchment after the city where it was refined, and by the time the Great Library in Alexandria was dismantled by Christian invaders in 391 CE, Europe had wholly switched from papyrus to parchment.
As parchment (and its derivative vellum, which is parchment made from baby animal skins) was super smooth, writing began to change to prioritize speed over clarity. Script became rounder and curvier, and then letters became interconnected so entire words could be written without lifting a pen. This type of writing was called cursive, and the new letters it used were called minuscule script.
The world of writing radically changed yet again in 1440 when a German goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg created the first printing press. For the first time, texts didn't have to be handwritten and instead could be mass-produced. While printing a book became cheaper, the use of parchment still made it unaffordable for most European families. To solve this problem, printers started using a new material that was created in China and then brought to Spain two centuries earlier by Islamic scholars. It was called paper, and by the end of the fifteenth century, it had mostly replaced parchment throughout Europe.
But what about capitals? Gutenberg saw that some printers preferred majuscule letters while others preferred minuscule letters, so instead of choosing between them, he included both. All of the letter stamps for his printing press came in a large case that opened into two halves. The majuscule letters were in the upper case, and the minuscule were in the lower case. Soon, the names majuscule and minuscule were replaced by uppercase letters and lowercase letters.
The first book Gutenberg mass-produced was the Bible, but during his initial print run, he quickly discovered a problem with his newly printed books: they were hard to read. To help with this, Gutenberg added punctuation to his press: a period to end sentences, a question mark to end questions, an interpunct to function as a clause separator (basically what we use a comma for today), a colon to denote "pauses for reflection," and a progenitor of the hyphen to keep margins straight.
Even with all these marks, priests and clerics still found the Gutenberg Bible hard to read. The trouble came because the Bible is not a storybook read from beginning to end; rather, it's a reference book, and those reading it needed an easy way to jump from verse to verse. Instead of creating another mark, Gutenberg started using his uppercase letters to start sentences and added red ink to make them stand out. Gutenberg also capitalized all the nouns in his sentences so finding the name of a Biblical character would be easier (though these letters didn't get red ink).
It's unclear whether Gutenberg created these capitalization conventions or if they were common in German writing at the time, but capitalization has stuck around ever since.
The geometry of these letters came as a result of how the progenitors of the English alphabet--the Phonecians, Greeks, and Romans—wrote words down. They would take a sharpened stick called a stylus or a stiff bird feather called a quill, dip the tip in a bunch of ashes mixed with water or oil (called lampblack), and etch letters on rough paper made from pressed grasses called papyrus, thick leather hides, clay tablets, or wood covered in a thin layer of beeswax. These materials were tough to work with, so letters needed easy shapes to reproduce. Thus these letters, referred to as majuscule script, were built for clarity.
So if it was called majuscule script, why do we call them "capital letters" (besides the fact that a good number of modern Americans wouldn't be able to pronounce, let alone spell, majuscule)? Ancient writers started to get fancy with some of their writing, and one way they did this was to take the first letter of a page or paragraph and make it larger than the rest and decorated. Since these letters occurred at the head of a section of writing, they were called capitals (today, they are called drop caps or versals).
During this time, the Egyptian city of Alexandria was considered the center of knowledge and learning for the Western world. Part of this was due to the Great Library of Alexandria, which housed 400,000 books at its height. The sheer volume of works in the Great Library turned Alexandria into the primary manufacturer and exporter of papyrus around the ancient world.
Why papyrus? Think of the last thing you wrote—how many times did you make a mistake that you had to retype or erase and rewrite? For the ancients, they had to toss the writing and start over again every time that happened. Papyrus was the most cost-effective surface to write on when every word had to be handwritten, and every Mediterranean country was primarily using papyrus to write by the time of the Roman unification.
Everything changed, however, when Alexandria started to fall on hard times. The Diaspora Revolt of 115 CE destroyed massive sections of the city and interrupted the production of papyrus, which led to an empire-wide shortage. A similar shortage occurred in 215 CE after Emperor Caracalla culled all the young men in the city because their jokes about him hurt his feelings. In 365 CE, Alexandria was yet again devastated, this time by a tsunami caused by the Great Crete Earthquake, the largest earthquake of the ancient world.
All these supply chain disruptions motivated Rome to look for alternatives to papyrus. They knew the best alternative would be thin sheets of goat and sheepskin—it had been around for centuries and was used by the ancient Greeks and Hebrews. However, it was very expensive to produce because it had to be cleaned, dehaired, stretched, and scraped.
These issues were solved by the Greek city of Pergamon when they started to soak skins in a lime solution to clean and dehair them, which was quicker, cheaper, and lasted longer than the liquor solutions that had been previously used for centuries. This new type of writing surface was called parchment after the city where it was refined, and by the time the Great Library in Alexandria was dismantled by Christian invaders in 391 CE, Europe had wholly switched from papyrus to parchment.
As parchment (and its derivative vellum, which is parchment made from baby animal skins) was super smooth, writing began to change to prioritize speed over clarity. Script became rounder and curvier, and then letters became interconnected so entire words could be written without lifting a pen. This type of writing was called cursive, and the new letters it used were called minuscule script.
The world of writing radically changed yet again in 1440 when a German goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg created the first printing press. For the first time, texts didn't have to be handwritten and instead could be mass-produced. While printing a book became cheaper, the use of parchment still made it unaffordable for most European families. To solve this problem, printers started using a new material that was created in China and then brought to Spain two centuries earlier by Islamic scholars. It was called paper, and by the end of the fifteenth century, it had mostly replaced parchment throughout Europe.
But what about capitals? Gutenberg saw that some printers preferred majuscule letters while others preferred minuscule letters, so instead of choosing between them, he included both. All of the letter stamps for his printing press came in a large case that opened into two halves. The majuscule letters were in the upper case, and the minuscule were in the lower case. Soon, the names majuscule and minuscule were replaced by uppercase letters and lowercase letters.
The first book Gutenberg mass-produced was the Bible, but during his initial print run, he quickly discovered a problem with his newly printed books: they were hard to read. To help with this, Gutenberg added punctuation to his press: a period to end sentences, a question mark to end questions, an interpunct to function as a clause separator (basically what we use a comma for today), a colon to denote "pauses for reflection," and a progenitor of the hyphen to keep margins straight.
Even with all these marks, priests and clerics still found the Gutenberg Bible hard to read. The trouble came because the Bible is not a storybook read from beginning to end; rather, it's a reference book, and those reading it needed an easy way to jump from verse to verse. Instead of creating another mark, Gutenberg started using his uppercase letters to start sentences and added red ink to make them stand out. Gutenberg also capitalized all the nouns in his sentences so finding the name of a Biblical character would be easier (though these letters didn't get red ink).
It's unclear whether Gutenberg created these capitalization conventions or if they were common in German writing at the time, but capitalization has stuck around ever since.
FOOTNOTES
1. "But I've seen lines of poetry that don't start with a capital letter!" This is a recent trend among modern poets, but traditionally, when writing poetry or citing lines of poetry, a capital letter is needed.
2. ...or are there? m.xkcd.com/2206
3. Martinez, California and Manhattan, New York, respectively
4. And if you do need to capitalize an eponym, do so consistently. For example, depending on the dictionary and style guide, you could have a Bloody Mary or a bloody mary, but never a bloody Mary even though Mary is the only proper name.
5. True story
6. Actually, Mx. (pronounced MECKS) isn't an abbreviation for anything. It's a neuter honorific in the style of the masculine Mr. and feminine Ms. for when gender is unknown or non-binary.
7. At least most initialisms stand in for a phrase. Some are made to appear like they have a meaning but don't, like SOS: these letters have never stood for any words but were the easiest to differentiate in the Morse code. Other initialisms have lost their original meaning and are now only letters: SAT used to be an initialism for "Scholastic Aptitude Test," but the words were dropped in 1997 because the SAT wanted to reflect that their exam was not a measure of aptitude and had more applications than just scholastic matters. SOS and SAT are examples of orphan initialisms.
8. Written numbers are also commonly swapped for digits as well: four-wheel drive = 4WD; a canine unit = K9 unit; Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company = 3M.
9. How does one know when an acronym turns into an everyday word? When it gets an inflection, i.e., when it's modified into another part of speech. For example, LASER used to be an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation; then, this noun became an adjective (laser beam, laser focus) and a verb (I got the hair on my legs lasered off), which is when it moved from an acronym to a word in its own right, which is called an anacronym. BTW, the opposite of this—reverse engineering a regular word into an acronym—is called a backronym.
1. "But I've seen lines of poetry that don't start with a capital letter!" This is a recent trend among modern poets, but traditionally, when writing poetry or citing lines of poetry, a capital letter is needed.
2. ...or are there? m.xkcd.com/2206
3. Martinez, California and Manhattan, New York, respectively
4. And if you do need to capitalize an eponym, do so consistently. For example, depending on the dictionary and style guide, you could have a Bloody Mary or a bloody mary, but never a bloody Mary even though Mary is the only proper name.
5. True story
6. Actually, Mx. (pronounced MECKS) isn't an abbreviation for anything. It's a neuter honorific in the style of the masculine Mr. and feminine Ms. for when gender is unknown or non-binary.
7. At least most initialisms stand in for a phrase. Some are made to appear like they have a meaning but don't, like SOS: these letters have never stood for any words but were the easiest to differentiate in the Morse code. Other initialisms have lost their original meaning and are now only letters: SAT used to be an initialism for "Scholastic Aptitude Test," but the words were dropped in 1997 because the SAT wanted to reflect that their exam was not a measure of aptitude and had more applications than just scholastic matters. SOS and SAT are examples of orphan initialisms.
8. Written numbers are also commonly swapped for digits as well: four-wheel drive = 4WD; a canine unit = K9 unit; Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company = 3M.
9. How does one know when an acronym turns into an everyday word? When it gets an inflection, i.e., when it's modified into another part of speech. For example, LASER used to be an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation; then, this noun became an adjective (laser beam, laser focus) and a verb (I got the hair on my legs lasered off), which is when it moved from an acronym to a word in its own right, which is called an anacronym. BTW, the opposite of this—reverse engineering a regular word into an acronym—is called a backronym.