Silly Question of the Day: What's a "Not Capital Letter" Called?

I just revisited this topic, and found it still to intrigue me!
Thank you, Talk, for archiving this kind of thing, so I can page back through this convo and revisit some of these sites I meant to, but never got around to (or forgot I had gotten to) assimilating into my repertoire…
Thank you!
PS What brought me here today? A memo from an upchain co-worker regarding accessibility (delivered electronically, employing “Times” font, per Microsoft).


Capitalization in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Ellesmere Manuscript, about 1400)

History of English capitalization

Old English did not have a distinction between uppercase and lowercase, and at best had embossed or decorated letters indicating sections. Middle English capitalization in manuscripts remained haphazard, and was often done for visual aesthetics more than grammar; in poetry, the first letter of each line of verse is often capitalized. With the development of the printing press in Europe and England capitalization of initial letters and proper nouns became more regularized,[1] perhaps partly to distinguish new sentences in a time where punctuation remained sparse and irregularly used. The plays of Shakespeare show capitalization both of new lines and sentences, proper nouns, and some significant common nouns and verbs.[2]

With the influence of continental printing practices after the English Restoration in 1688 printing began to favor more and more capitalization of nouns following German typography. The first lines of the U.S. Constitution of 1787 show major capitalization of most nouns: " We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."[3] But by the end of the 18th century with the growth of prescriptive dictionaries and style manuals for English usage, the practice faded in Britain so that by the beginning of the 19th century common nouns were only occasionally capitalized, such as in advertisements. Yet the style lasted as late as the Civil War era in the United States, as some of Emily Dickinson’s poems still capitalize many common nouns.[4]

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Other silly questions…

Why is it that you can spell the word T Y P E W R I T E R using only one row of keys on a keyboard?

Why does a German keyboard have the letters Y and Z swapped?

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Don’t forget that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow a typist down, as humans could reach a speed that would jam the keys on a keyboard that was designed for the most optimum use.

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I’ve heard that often as well and decided to Google. FWIW, there is some doubt on that:

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Ever tried the Dvorak?

Also, THAT rabbit hole went somewhere…interesting?

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I’ve never tried one at all. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever physically seen one :slight_smile:

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Oh, I’ve never SEEN one, either. But I have enabled it, printed out a template/cheatsheet, and made an effort…
It was interesting.
But I never could get the hang of it…

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Super interesting article, thank you for sharing. I have some pedigree in voice recognition. As my great uncle was the inventor of the IBM shoebox is in the 60s.

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Cool!

This reminds me of the time I was chastised during a “Math Speed Bee” in elementary school for (correctly, says I) answering “oh” to a problem resulting in the numeral “zero”, which my opponent used, causing my answer to be finished prior to theirs, and them to squawk that I had “cheated”. If only I had the Internet in my classroom that day, to show precedent by the great IBM. :slight_smile:

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I wish this was available on current mobile phones.
The developer passed away several years ago, but when it was available for Palm devices, it rocked.

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We had a booth at codelaunch like a month ago and one of the finalist was Characorder
You basically have only 10 keys and you simultaneously press combinations and it figures out the whole word for every key stroke. Its the craziest fastest thing I’ve ever seen

https://www.codelaunch.com/BlogPost/TheStoryOfCharachorder

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