Upper Case

[GuavaHalf]

Why do we have two ways of writing the letters in our alphabet (upper and lowercase) ? Is this a feature of other alphabets and what advantage, if any, does it confer on the language?

[Quizmonster]

Click http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1304903 for a web-page which explains how the two writing-formats developed. The basic idea behind the modification of upper case forms into lower case ones was speed and ease of writing them for the monks of olden times. The upper case forms were retained for important words such as sentence-opening letters and proper names. The greatest advantage is the help it gives in "leading" one sensibly through a passage, by making it clear where one idea ends and another starts.

[bernardo]

The obvious benefit is that it is easier to spot Proper Names, the first word of a sentence, or (in German) a Noun.

Out of 28 scripts shown in "Compendium of the World's Languages" by George L. Campbell (1995) the only other scripts which have a differentiation between upper and lower cases are Greek, Cyrillic (Russian etc.), and Armenian.

There are some languages which use the Roman alphabet (particularly invented languages) which do not use capital letters, or use the capital letters as different characters in the alphabet.  For example, in tlhIngan (Klingon), q and Q are different letters, and the letter I (eye) is always written as I instead of i.