h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I found the following passage, written by a surgeon in 1728, referring to a teenage patient recovering from a cataract operation which had given him usable sight for the first time :

"We thought he soon knew what Pictures represented, which were shew'd to him, but we found afterwards we were mistaken, for about two Months after he was couch'd, he discovered at once, they represented solid Bodies; when to that Time he consider'd them only as Party-colour'd Planes, or Surfaces diversified with Variety of Paint; but even then he was no less surpriz'd, expecting the Pictures would feel like the Things they represented, and was amaz'd when he found those Parts, which by their Light and Shadow appear'd now round and uneven, felt only flat like the rest; and as'd which was the lying Sense, Feeling, or Seeing?"

Was the use of capitalisation of words in those days simply a matter of emphasis, or is there some kind of parallel with the German system of capitalising all nouns.?

Come to think of it, what is the origin of the more limited capitalisation of names of people and organisations in modern English, since that seems to be common across European languages, and doesn't seem to be a simply Germanic phenomenon.?

I don't know the answer to the question, but I know that originally capitals and small letters were considered like two different fonts of the same alphabet and were not mixed. Small letters were called minuscules. They were used for handwriting. Capitals were used for big carved letters in stone. They often appeared on inscriptions on the fronts of temple above the pillars. This part is called the capital, so the letters became known as capital letters. The terms upper and lower case came from printing, where the typesetters had cases full of lead letters. The upper case held the capitals and the lower case held the minuscules.

I'm pretty sure capitalisation was used for emphasis at that time. I haven't got dates when it stopped being done, but I think it was relatively recently. (I hate this keyboard!!)

Here is a summary of a summary I found on the 'net, edited by me to simplify and to remove email addresses, which I think are not allowed here:



Subject: Sum.: History of Capitalisation in English

Back in late January/early February I posted a query to LINGUIST about sources on the history of capitalisation in English. Several people responded asking me to post a summary to the list on any replies I might receive. Here is the summary:

The most immediate "success" reply suggested the following article: Osselton, Noel (1985) 'Spelling-book rules and the capitalization of nouns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries'. In Arn, Mary-Jo and Hanneke Wirtjes (eds.). **Historical and editorial studies in medieval and modern English: for Johan Gerritsen.** Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen, pp. 49-61.

To my delight, I found that "my" university library (Knight Lib. at the U. of Oregon) had precisely this volume. The article (chapter) is only 6 pages long, but contains as well a list of spelling books and grammars, etc. to which Osselton referred in the text. There is also a page of notes. This reference is the most useful I have yet seen, and I will be using it (when I have the time) as a foundation for finding more info. on this topic. A good place to start, I think.

Another reply pointed me towards UseNet lists which, I regret, I have not yet been able to try. He suggests comp.fonts, or the repositories of past UseNet postings (he is not sure where they are), or the UseNet FAQ collections. Also, comp.text.

Another respondent suggested looking into the literature of printing history, as he reminded me that "in fact capitalization was often regularized by the printer."

Yet another wrote and remarked that "[t]he distinction between upper and lower case in the roman alphabet obviously developed in the writing of the Middle Ages..." I confess that my knowledge of the Middle Ages is not sufficient to know why this is "obvious".

It was suggested I might look at Geoffrey Nunberg's writings, "esp. his history of punctuation", but she noted that this is "just a hunch", as she has not yet read the work. Nor have I, yet!

A final response suggested: "I note that there is a Library of Congress heading Capitalization, but most of the books there are prescriptive or educational. There is also a subheading Capitalization under languages, but English Language-- Capitalization gives only workbooks. I found some books on German capitalization which may (or may not) be helpful. See below. Harvard's catalogue lists 15 books on English capitalization, all prescriptive."

That is all. I would like to thank everyone who replied, even if only to express an interest. It was heartening to know that other people find this a tantalizing question as well. To conclude, I would like to put forward some further questions that have occurred to me as a result of the responses I received....

1) In connection to the point about the rise of the printing industry as an important influence in **regularising** the use of capitalisation, I still have questions about the way people capitalised BEFORE the printing press. For instance, in religious writings, such as the Book of Kells (Eire), we find capital letters, ornately decorated, at the start of portions of text/top of the page. Why were capitals used? I haven't seen copies of the work, but did Adam Bede do the same?

2) Building on (1), I then ask, where/why did the idea of capitalisation arise in the first place? In quite a number of other writing systems of the world, a method of marking "important" words with a larger, and slightly different version, of the "normal" sized letters is completely absent. Thus, who/why/where did capitalisation come into being? We take this so much for granted, I wonder if we can still re-/discover the reasoning behind this "distinctiveness" strategy. (And as a final parting shot, so to speak, I would like to point out that in English writing we use a capital letter for the 1st.p.s. in ALL environments, but not for any other person! Why? Was this a printing influence too (e.g., to distinguish it from small "i" in Roman numerals?).

From talking to a local professor, Russian, for instance, (if I remember correctly), does NOT have this distinction. How about other language writing systems, European or not? And what effect does this English pattern have on us psychologically? In the sense that "I" is more important than "you, them" etc.?). Once again, thank-you to all respondents.

** "Words don't mean, people mean...." ** (have forgotten the author of this reminder).



Helpful, I hope?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Here's an 'alternative' theory from an h2g2 researcher - A683705



spiff

Whither "witlow"
In my dialect aka "idle Jack"

Do you mean "whence whitlow"? (she asked very pedantically)
If so, 6-700 years ago it was "whitflawe" = white flaw, but I was well into my 30s before I realised they weren't actually called by the Irish place name.

I'm lost here. "Whitlow" according to my dictionary is something wrong with a finger or toe. I've never heard of it. What's Idle Jack? Do you say I have an Idle Jack on my thumb? I do know about Wicklow, though. It is a town and county in Ireland south of Dublin.

Whitlows are inflammations (pus-filled in my experience) in the bit where the nail is embedded, ie not the top end that you cut. The relationship with Irish counties was only in my deranged synapses

Doesn't 'whitlow' also describe those tiny flaps of loose skin that occur either side of your nail, near the nail bed, and catch on everything you go near, causing pain and discomfort?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I thought the flaps of skin were agnails or hang-nails.

Hmmm, good point, Gnomon. I think you're right.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Can someone please tell me how to pronounce the name of that river in Eastern England, the Ouse. Does it rhyme with choose, cows or neither?

Definitely rhymes with booze!

hic
spiff

Nope, no use, no matter how hard I try I cannot get 'Ouse' to rhyme with 'neither'.

I thought a hangnail was when you had managed to bite (sorry, cut!) halfway through your nail to remove the excess but had stopped short, thus creating a flappy nail bit, literally hanging on.

(If you want a laugh, try getting the proper pronunciation of Folkingham )

I thought the capitalisation in older English was a remnant of the practice (still extant in German) of capitalising nouns.

The capitalisation of "I" is a little complex, but it comes from the stressed form of the pronoun "ic", if I recall, and was originally capitalised to distinguish one form from the other in manuscipts. My memory on this is a little hazy.

My mother used to refer to the annoying little bits of skin at the base/edge of the nail as stepmother's blessings, though a web search only gives the usage as the Yorkshire name of a plant that's supposed to be bad luck if brought within the house.

In our discussions on effect / affect, or indeed elsewhere, did anybody mention the use of 'effects' as personal property, i.e. one's personal effects? I can't seem to find anything, and I appologise if I'm covering old ground, but I can't find anything about where this phrase comes from, any ideas?

Hm - 14th century French. Obviously fetched a bit far from the other meanings of effects. I personally use "mpashle" for this sense, but I doubt you'll find it in an English dictionary (who has just reread Gnomon's article on Old English, and thinks the rest of you should do likewise)

Having looked around, I can't find much useful around on the web.

One of the meanings of effect is 'accomplishment', and I assume that might be the interpretation of the word that most closely links with the phrase 'personal effects', in the sense of property that someone has worked for?

I'm not sure why the phrase relates solely to movable property. Going out on a limb, maybe there was some legal distinction drawn between movable goods (which were in the gift of the owner) and real estate, (which may have been assumed to be destined for a specific heir, and was as much the property of a family as an individual)?