When and why were lower-case letters invented?
When and why was the sans serif font invented?
awaits links to google and wikipedia, rather than handed-down knowledge like we used to do in the old days
In the old days we used books.
Unless... Gee whiz, I wonder what those "library" things I used to spend so much time in when I wanted to learn about something I didn't know about were really for.
But off the top of my head... 1. Depends on your language (for instance in German all nouns, not just proper nouns have the first letter capitalised) but the main purpose is to improve readability - you can easily tell where a sentence starts if it begins with a capital letter. It is also easier to pick out the important bits so you can scan a page quicker if all the proper nouns are capitalised.
It's worth noting that the consistent use of capitalisation in English as we use it now wasn't standardised until relatively recently (like since Shakespeare recently, same with spelling).
So basically lower case was invented to help upper case stand out.
At a wild guess I'm going to say a couple of centuries before Old German and Old English became separate languages, since proto germanic languages are all uppercase AFAIK. I know the use of mixed case in Latin came into use in the Middle Ages.
- Modernism (in the art history sense) and legibility. You should look modernism up.
I don't even think there are capital letters in certain language scripts.
Arabic? Manadarin? Hindi? Klingon?
CAPS WERE INVENTED BECAUSE NOBODY CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM ON TEH INTERWEB!!!
What the fuck is this bullshit. GO AND GET LAID.
That's pretty much your blanket response to everything these days... what would you do if I made a thread about getting laid?!
STFU and DO IT ALREADY.
So it's basically ZEE GERMANS fault is what ari's saying.
(the font business, not getting laid)
Originally posted by: X-DUD!!!11~~ That's pretty much your blanket response to everything these days... what would you do if I made a thread about getting laid?!
I WOULD KEEL OVER AND DIE OF SHOCK.
More likely the Church since they were the ones writing in Latin & all. In the Middle Ages pretty much only churchy types were literate beyond being able to write their name.
early greek had minuscule type (7th c)... and there were proto versions of it across europe, but it didn't become common until the 7th century in England/Ireland, where Insular and uncial types of script were developed to improve speed and accuracy in transcription.
Under Charlemagne, carolingian minuscule script was popularized and it became fairly commonly used. This is the first time upper and lower cases were commonly mixed in the same sentences.
This was all formalized with the development of movable type and we started calling it lower case, because they used the (physically) lower case to hold the letter punches in the rack.
Sans serifs were found in Etruscan inscriptions in the 5th century BC, but then it wasn't really until people started moving away from the broad nib pen (which makes serifs a natural part of writing), that the serifs went away - say 1750's. 18th century neoclassicism in type design saw several sans-serif typefaces created.
Look out for future thread release from the inquisitive cogs of X-DUD!!!11~~'s mind. Titles include:
"why do numbers add together?"
"who made food chewy?"
"When I shut my eyes, where do they go?"
"which came first, sheep or dogs?"
subscribes, furiously
Originally posted by: X-DUD!!!11~~ That's pretty much your blanket response to everything these days... what would you do if I made a thread about getting laid?!
Yeah right, like THAT'S gonna happen.
But if it does, we expect proof. We're not interested in your man grunts or anything else of yours, mind you. We want her in a variety of angles, sans clothes. It would be a bonus if you could include footage containing her inevitable sighs of disappointment and no-doubt emasculating commentary as she leaves.
She?
Bwahawhahahahahahahahaw!
Originally posted by: AgentX She?
Bwahawhahahahahahahahaw!
ICE BURN
FTW
Originally posted by: wingworm Look out for future thread release from the inquisitive cogs of X-DUD!!!11~~'s mind. Titles include:
"why do numbers add together?"
"who made food chewy?"
"When I shut my eyes, where do they go?"
"which came first, sheep or dogs?" Legions and legions of roflcopters.
Ya. That had me bust into giggles too.
Post du jour.