Our own two kinds or fonts of letters, the capital and “lower case” or “minuscule,” are more different than we ordinarily realize. We have seen them both so often in the same words that we are likely to forget that the “A” differs even more in form than in size from “a,” and that “b” has wholly lost the upper of the two loops which mark “B.” In late Imperial Roman times the original “capital” forms of the letters were retained for inscriptional purposes, but in ordinary writing changes began to creep in. These modifications increased in the Middle Ages, giving rise first to the “Uncial” and then to the “Minuscule” forms of the letters. Both represent a cursive rather than a formal script. The minuscules are essentially the modern “small” letters. But when they first developed, people wrote wholly in them, reserving the older formal capitals for chapter initials. Later, the capitals crept out of their temporary rarity and came to head paragraphs, sentences, proper names, and in fact all words that seemed important. Even as late as a few centuries ago, every English noun was written and printed with a capital letter, as it still is in German. Of course little or nothing was gained by this procedure. In many sentences the significant word must be a verb or adjective; and yet, according to the arbitrary old rule, it was the noun that was made to stand out.
To-day we still feel it necessary in English to retain capitals for proper names. It is certain that a suggestion to commence these also with small letters would be met with the objection that a loss of clearness would be entailed. As a matter of fact, the cases in which ambiguity between a common and proper noun might ensue would be exceedingly few; the occasional inconvenience so caused would be more than compensated for by increased simplicity of writing and printing. Every child would learn its letters in little more than half the time that it requires now. The printer would be able to operate with half as many characters, and typewriting machines could dispense with a shift key. French and Spanish designate proper adjectives without capitals and encounter no misunderstanding, and all English telegrams are sent in a code that makes no distinction. When we read the newspaper in the morning and think that the mixture of capital and small letters is necessary for our easy comprehension of the page, we forget that this same news came over the wire without capitals.
143. Conservatism and Rationalization
The fact is that we have become so habituated to the existing method that a departure from it might temporarily be a bit disconcerting. Consequently we rationalize our cumbersome habit, taking for granted or explaining that this custom is intrinsically and logically best; although a moments objective reflection suffices to show that the system we are so addicted to costs each of us, and will cost the next generation, time, energy, and money without bringing substantial compensation.
It is true that this waste is distributed through our lives in small driblets, and therefore is something that can be borne without seeming inconvenience. Civilization undoubtedly can continue to thrive even while it adheres to the antiquated and jumbling method of mixing two kinds of letters where one is sufficient. Yet the practice illustrates the principle that the most civilized as the most savage nations assert and believe that they adhere to their institutions after an impartial consideration of all alternatives and in full exercise of wisdom, whereas analysis regularly reveals them as astonishingly resistive to alteration whether for better or worse.
If our capital letters had been purposely superadded to the small ones as a means of distinguishing certain kinds of words, a modern claim that they were needed for this purpose could perhaps be accepted. But since the history of the alphabet shows that the capital letters are the earlier ones, that the small letters were for centuries used alone, and that systems of writing have operated and operate without the distinction, it is clear that utility cannot be the true motive. The employment of capital letters as initials originated in a desire for ornamentation. It is an embroidery, the result of a play of the æsthetic sense. It is the use of capitals that has caused the false sense of their need, not necessity that has led to their use.
144. Gothic
Another exemplification of how tenaciously men cling to the accustomed at the expense of efficiency, is provided by the “Black-Letter” or “Gothic” alphabet used in Germany and Scandinavia. This is nothing but the Roman letters as elaborated by the manuscript-copying monks of northern Europe toward the end of the Middle Ages, when a book was as much a work of art as a volume of reading matter. The sharp angles, double connecting strokes, goose-quill flourishes, and other increments of the Gothic letters undoubtedly possess a decorative effect, although an over-elaborate one. They were evolved in a period when a copyist cheerfully lettered for a year in producing a volume, and the lord or bishop into whose hands it passed was as likely to turn the leaves in admiration of the black and red characters as to spend time in reading them.
When printing was introduced, the first types were the intricate and angular Gothic ones customary in Germany. The Italians, who had always been half-hearted about the Gothic forms, soon revolted. Under the influence of the Renaissance and its renewed inspiration from classical antiquity, they reverted as far as possible to the ancient shapes of the characters. Even the mediæval small letters were simplified and rounded as much as possible to bring them into accord with the old Roman style. From Italy these types spread to France and most other European countries, including England, which for the first fifty years had printed in Black-Letter. Only in north central Europe did the Gothic forms continue to prevail, although even there all scientific books have for some time been printed in the Roman alphabet. Yet Germans sometimes complain of the “difficulty” of the Roman letters, and books intended for popular sale, and newspapers, go into Gothic. There can be little doubt that in time the Roman letters will dispossess the Gothic ones in Germany and Scandinavia except for ornamental display heads. But the established ways die hard; Gothic letters may linger on as the “old-style” calendar with its eleven-day belatedness held out in England until 1752 and in Russia until 1917.