The Cult of Lower Case
By.Douglas C. McMurtrie

Letters either upper case or lower are beautiful. It is difficult for me to imagine not using capitals in my everyday life. They are part of our culture and how we do things. The article says that “capitals only hold their jobs through influence of tradition.” We are used to them. The question is rather could we do without them. After years of training our eye to get used to the idea of not having capitals, I would guess it would become normal like when anything is changed in our lives. No one liked the idea of cell phones or computers and we all got used to them. Now I am not saying that changing the way we write and use letters is the same thing. And I do not agree with getting rid of capitals. I do feel that they have a special place in the world, and they do there job.
“Do they or do they not contribute to our ease of reading and comprehending what we read.” Here is a great question. I think that they do. The use of the capital helps us to clearly read. Yes, there are the typical beginning of a sentence and when you are spelling a name, or place. But does anyone think about the capitals we see other than that. On a stop sign, when someone is trying to get our attention. These are ways we use type to reach people. If we saw stop, instead of STOP, we may see it as less important. Yes, “ with ascenders and decenders the small letters have more numerous points of differentiation in thier form than do capitals.” And as designers we use this to our advantage. We can run words off a page and still know what letter it is. This isn’t as simple with capitals. They may not stand on their own when they are only partially shown. They tend to look like other letters. Like the Base of a F, T,or an R, H, or A. because of the way that the legs are set, if you cut off the top you loose the letter. If I see something written in all lower case I get the feeling that it is soft, and nice. When they are in all caps they say that they are important and need to stand out. I think using the two together make our language what it is, and who we are. Just like the way someone speaks, the way that we use type is unique to us.
This article brought to my attention the fact that only the “white” races use capitals. And I think that it is amazing. There are so many languages and ways of writing. To us it is strange that you would not use capitals. But other countries do and it works for them. But like the book says, Germany uses capitals more than anyone else. So getting rid of using capitals would not work for them at all. I think that some cultures can do this, but other can not. I don’t feel that this is a good thing. I like my capitals, I like using them with lower case. Should it only be one or the other, no. They both play to big a role in our culture and society. We need them, we are used to them. They are guides, history, and the future of type. Without one, words would loose all meaning that they once had. And words are powerful.