Letter case

"Lowercase" redirects here. For the musical style, seeLowercase (music)."Uppercase" redirects here. For the magazine, seeUppercase (magazine)."Capital Letters" redirects here. For the song, seeCapital Letters (song).

Letter caseis the distinction between the letters that are in largeruppercaseorcapitals(more formallymajuscule) and smallerlowercase(more formallyminuscule) in the written representation of certain languages. Thewriting systemsthat distinguish between the upper- and lowercase have two parallel sets of letters: each in the majuscule set has a counterpart in the minuscule set. Some counterpart letters have the same shape, and differ only in size (e.g.⟨C, c⟩or⟨S, s⟩), but for others the shapes are different (e.g.,⟨A, a⟩or⟨G, g⟩). The two case variants are alternative representations of the same letter: they have the same name andpronunciationand are typically treated identically when sorting inalphabetical order.

The lower-case "a" and upper-case "A" are the two case variants of the first letter in theEnglish alphabet.

Letter case is generally applied in a mixed-case fashion, with both upper and lowercase letters appearing in a given piece of text for legibility. The choice of case is often denoted by thegrammarof a language or by the conventions of a particular discipline. Inorthography,the uppercase is reserved for special purposes, such as the first letter of asentenceor of aproper noun(called capitalisation, or capitalised words), which makes lowercase more common in regular text.

In some contexts, it is conventional to use one case only. For example,engineering design drawingsare typically labelled entirely in uppercase letters, which are easier to distinguish individually than the lowercase when space restrictions require very small lettering. Inmathematics,on the other hand, uppercase and lower case letters denote generally differentmathematical objects,which may be related when the two cases of the same letter are used; for example,xmay denote an element of asetX.

Terminology

Divided upper and lower type cases with cast metalsorts

Layout for type cases

The termsupper caseandlower casemay be written as two consecutive words, connected with a hyphen (upper-caseandlower-case– particularly if theypre-modifyanother noun),or as a single word (uppercaseandlowercase). These terms originated from the common layouts of the shallowdrawerscalledtype casesused to hold themovable typeforletterpress printing.Traditionally, the capital letters were stored in a separate shallow tray or "case" that was located above the case that held the small letters.

Majuscule

Majuscule(/ˈmædʒəskjuːl/,less commonly/məˈdʒʌskjuːl/), forpalaeographers,is technically any script whose letters have very few or very shortascendersand descenders, or none at all (for example, the majuscule scripts used in theCodex Vaticanus Graecus 1209,or theBook of Kells). By virtue of their visual impact, this made the term majuscule an apt descriptor for what much later came to be more commonly referred to as uppercase letters.

Minuscule

"Minuscule" redirects here. For other uses, seeMinuscule (disambiguation).

Minusculerefers tolower-case letters.The word is often spelledminiscule,by association with the unrelated wordminiatureand the prefixmini-.That has traditionally been regarded as a spelling mistake (sinceminusculeis derived from the wordminus), but is now so common that somedictionariestend to accept it as a non-standard or variant spelling.Minisculeis still less likely, however, to be used in reference to lower-case letters.

Typographical considerations

Theglyphsof lowercase letters can resemble smaller forms of the uppercase glyphs restricted to the baseband (e.g. "C/c" and "S/s", cf.small caps) or can look hardly related (e.g. "D/d" and "G/g" ). Here is a comparison of the upper and lower case variants of each letter included in theEnglish alphabet(the exact representation will vary according to thetypefaceandfontused):

Uppercase	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Lowercase	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k	l	m	n	o	p	q	r	s	t	u	v	w	x	y	z

(Some lowercase letters have variations e.g. a/ɑ.)

Typographically,the basic difference between the majuscules and minuscules is not that the majuscules are big and minuscules small, but that the majuscules generally are of uniform height (although, depending on the typeface, there may be some exceptions, particularly withQand sometimesJhaving a descending element; also, variousdiacriticscan add to the normal height of a letter).

Ascenders (as in "h" ) and descenders (as in "p" ) make the height of lower-case letters vary.

There is more variation in the height of the minuscules, as some of them have parts higher (ascenders) or lower (descenders) than the typical size. Normally,b, d, f, h, k, l, tare the letters with ascenders, andg, j, p, q, yare the ones with descenders. In addition, withold-style numeralsstill used by some traditional or classical fonts,6and8make up the ascender set, and3, 4, 5, 7,and9the descender set.

Bicameral script

HandwrittenCyrillic script

AdygheLatin alphabet, used between 1927 and 1938, was based on Latin script, but did not have capital letters, being unicameral (small capsinclude ᴀ, ʙ, ᴣ, ʀ,ⱪ,ᴘ, and.

A minority of writing systems use two separate cases. Such writing systems are calledbicameral scripts.These scripts include theLatin,Cyrillic,Greek,Coptic,Armenian,Glagolitic,Adlam,Warang Citi,Garay,Zaghawa,Osage,Vithkuqi,andDeseretscripts. Languages written in these scripts use letter cases as an aid to clarity. TheGeorgian alphabethas several variants, and there were attempts to use them as different cases, but the modern writtenGeorgian languagedoes not distinguish case.

All other writing systems make no distinction between majuscules and minuscules – a system called unicameral script orunicase.This includes mostsyllabicand other non-alphabetic scripts.

In scripts with a case distinction, lowercase is generally used for the majority of text; capitals are used for capitalisation andemphasiswhenboldis not available.Acronyms(and particularly initialisms) are often written inall-caps,depending onvarious factors.

Capitalisation

Main article:Capitalisation

Capitalisation is thewritingof awordwith its firstletterin uppercase and the remaining letters in lowercase. Capitalisation rules vary bylanguageand are often quite complex, but in most modern languages that have capitalisation, the first word of everysentenceis capitalised, as are allproper nouns.

Capitalisation in English, in terms of the general orthographic rules independent of context (e.g. title vs. heading vs. text), is universally standardised forformalwriting. Capital letters are used as the first letter of a sentence, a proper noun, or aproper adjective.Thenames of the days of the weekand the names of the months are also capitalised, as are the first-personpronoun"I"and thevocative particle"O".There are a few pairs of words of different meanings whoseonly difference is capitalisationof the first letter.Honorificsand personaltitlesshowing rank or prestige are capitalised when used together with the name of the person (for example, "Mr. Smith", "Bishop Gorman", "Professor Moore" ) or as a direct address, but normally not when used alone and in a more general sense.It can also be seen as customary to capitalise any word – in some contexts even a pronoun– referring to thedeityof amonotheistic religion.

Other words normally start with a lower-case letter. There are, however, situations where further capitalisation may be used to give added emphasis, for example in headings and publication titles (see below). In some traditional forms of poetry, capitalisation has conventionally been used as a marker to indicate the beginning of aline of verseindependent of any grammatical feature. In political writing, parody and satire, the unexpected emphasis afforded by otherwise ill-advised capitalisation is often used to great stylistic effect, such as in the case of George Orwell'sBig Brother.

Other languages vary in their use of capitals. For example, inGermanall nouns are capitalised (this was previously common in English as well, mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries), while inRomanceand most other European languages the names of the days of the week, the names of the months, and adjectives of nationality, religion, and so on normally begin with a lower-case letter.On the other hand, in some languages it is customary to capitaliseformal polite pronouns,for exampleDe,Dem(Danish),Sie,Ihnen(German), andVdorUd(short forustedinSpanish).

Informal communication, such astexting,instant messagingor a handwrittensticky note,may not bother to follow the conventions concerning capitalisation, but that is because its users usually do not expect it to be formal.

Exceptional letters and digraphs

• The German letter "ß"formerly existed only in lower case. The orthographical capitalisation does not concern" ß ", which generally does not occur at the beginning of a word, and in the all-caps style it has traditionally been replaced by thedigraph"SS". Since June 2017, however,capital ẞis accepted as an alternative in the all-caps style.
• The Greek upper-case letter "Σ"has two different lower-case forms:" ς "in word-final position and" σ "elsewhere. In a similar manner, the Latin upper-case letter"S"used to have two different lower-case forms:" s "in word-final position and"ſ"elsewhere. The latter form, called thelong s,fell out of general use before the middle of the 19th century, except for the countries that continued to useblacklettertypefaces such asFraktur.When blackletter type fell out of general use in the mid-20th century, even those countries dropped the long s.
• The treatment of the Greekiota subscriptwith upper-case letters is complicated.
• Unlike most languages that use Latin-script and link the dotless upper-case "I"with the dotted lower-case" i ",Turkishas well assome forms of Azerihave both adottedanddotless I,each in both upper and lower case. Each of the two pairs ( "İ/i"and"I/ı") represents a distinctivephoneme.
• In some languages, specific digraphs may be regarded as single letters, and inDutch,the digraph "IJ/ij"is even capitalised with both components written in uppercase (for example," IJsland "rather than" Ijsland ").In other languages, such asWelshandHungarian,various digraphs are regarded as single letters for collation purposes, but the second component of the digraph will still be written in lower case even if the first component is capitalised. Similarly, inSouth Slavic languageswhose orthography is coordinated between the Cyrillic and Latin scripts, the Latin digraphs "Lj/lj","Nj/nj"and"Dž/dž"are each regarded as a single letter (like their Cyrillic equivalents"Љ/љ","Њ/њ"and"Џ/џ",respectively), but only in all-caps style should both components be in upper case (e.g. Ljiljan–LJILJAN, Njonja–NJONJA, Džidža–DŽIDŽA).Unicodedesignates asingle characterfor each case variant (i.e., upper case, title case and lower case) of the three digraphs.
• Some English surnames such as fforbes are traditionally spelt with a digraph instead of a capital letter (at least for ff).
• In theHawaiianorthography, theʻokinais aphonemicsymbol that visually resembles a left singlequotation mark.Representing theglottal stop,the ʻokina can be characterised as either a letteror adiacritic.As a unicase letter, the ʻokina is unaffected by capitalisation; it is the following letter that is capitalised instead. According to theUnicodestandard, the ʻokina is formally encoded asU+02BBʻMODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA,but it is not uncommon to substitute this with a similarpunctuationcharacter, such as the left single quotation mark or anapostrophe.

Related features

Similar orthographic and graphostylistic conventions are used for emphasis or following language-specific or other rules, including:

• Fonteffects such asitalic typeoroblique type,boldface,and choice ofserifvs.sans-serif.
• Inmathematical notationlower-case and upper-case letters have generally different meanings, and other meanings can be implied by the use of othertypefaces,such asboldface,fraktur,script typeface,andblackboard bold.
• Some letters of theArabicandHebrew alphabetsand somejamoof the Koreanhangulhave different forms depending on placement within a word, but these rules are strict and the different forms cannot be used for emphasis.
  • In the Arabic and Arabic-based alphabets, letters in a word are connected, except for several that cannot connect to the following letter. Letters may have distinct forms depending on whether they are initial (connected only to the following letter), medial (connected to both neighboring letters), final (connected only to the preceding letter), or isolated (connected to neither a preceding nor a following letter).
  • In the Hebrew alphabet, five letters have a distinct form (seeFinal form) that is used when they are word-final.
• InGeorgian,some authors use isolated letters from the ancientAsomtavrulialphabet within a text otherwise written in the modernMkhedruliin a fashion that is reminiscent of the usage of upper-case letters in the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets.
• In theJapanese writing system,an author has the option of switching betweenkanji,hiragana,katakana,andrōmaji.In particular, every hiragana character has an equivalent katakana character, and vice versa. Romanised Japanese sometimes uses lowercase letters to represent words that would be written in hiragana, and uppercase letters to represent words that would be written in katakana. Some kana characters are written in smaller type when they modify or combine with the preceding sign (yōon) or the following sign (sokuon).

Stylistic or specialised usage

Alternating all-caps and headline styles at the start of aNew York Timesreport published in November 1919. (The event reported isArthur Eddington'stestofEinstein'stheory of general relativity.)

In English, a variety of case styles are used in various circumstances:

Sentence case

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
A mixed-case style in which the first word of the sentence is capitalised, as well as proper nouns and other words as required by a more specific rule. This is generally equivalent to the baseline universal standard of formal English orthography.

Incomputer programming,the initial capital is easier to automate than the other rules. For example, on English-languageWikipedia,the first character inpage titlesis capitalised by default. Because the other rules are more complex,substringsforconcatenationinto sentences are commonly written in "mid-sentence case", applying all the rules of sentence case except the initial capital.

Title case(capital case, headline style)

"The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog"
A mixed-case style with all words capitalised, except for certain subsets (particularlyarticlesand shortprepositionsandconjunctions) defined by rules that are not universally standardised. The standardisation is only at the level of house styles and individualstyle manuals.(See further explanation below at§ Headings and publication titles.)

Start case (First letter of each word capitalized)

"The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog"
Start case,initial capsorproper caseis a simplified variant of title case. Intext processing,start case usually involves the capitalisation of all words irrespective of theirpart of speech.

All caps(all uppercase)

"THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG"
A unicase style with capital letters only. This can be used in headings and special situations, such as for typographical emphasis in text made on a typewriter. With the advent of theInternet,the all-caps style is more often used for emphasis; however, it is considered poornetiquetteby some to type in all capitals, and said to be tantamount to shouting.Long spans of Latin-alphabet text in all upper-case are more difficult to read because of the absence of theascendersanddescendersfound in lower-case letters, which aids recognition and legibility. In some cultures it is common to write family names in all caps to distinguish them from the given names, especially in identity documents such as passports. Certain musicians—such asMarinaandFinneas,who are both known mononymously, and some bands such asHaimandKiss—have their names stylised in all caps. Additionally, it is common for bands with vowelless names (a process colourfully known as "disemvoweling") to use all caps, with prominent examples includingSTRFKR,MSTRKRFT,PWR BTTM,SBTRKT,JPNSGRLS(now known as Hotel Mira),BLK JKS,MNDR,andDWNTWN.

Small caps

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
Similar in form to capital letters but roughly the size of a lower-case "x", small caps can be used instead of lower-case letters and combined with regular caps in a mixed-case fashion. This is a feature of certain fonts, such asCopperplate Gothic.According to various typographical traditions, the height of small caps can be equal to or slightly larger than thex-heightof the typeface (the smaller variant is sometimes calledpetite capsand may also be mixed with the larger variant).Small caps can be used for acronyms, names, mathematical entities, computer commands in printed text, business or personal printed stationery letterheads, and other situations where a given phrase needs to be distinguished from the main text.

All lowercase

"the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

A unicase style with no capital letters. This is sometimes used for artistic effect, such as in poetry. Also commonly seen in computer languages, and in informal electronic communications such asSMS languageandinstant messaging(avoiding theshift key,to type more quickly). Examples in music are relatively common. For example, several ofTaylor Swift's albums, includingreputation,folklore,andevermore,were all stylised in lowercase. Bands such asWeezerandSilverchairwere also stylised in lowercase for multiple albums during their respective careers, with the former consistently using lowercase in their logo since theirfirst studio album.Billie Eilish's debut studio album—When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?—has all of its tracks stylised in lowercase. Some people, such as authorbell hooks,write their names in all lowercase.

A comparison of various case styles (from most to least capitals used)

Case style	Example								Description
All-caps	THE	VITAMINS	ARE	IN	MY	FRESH	CALIFORNIA	RAISINS	All letters uppercase
Start case	The	Vitamins	Are	In	My	Fresh	California	Raisins	All words capitalised regardless offunction
Title case	The	Vitamins	Are	in	My	Fresh	California	Raisins	The first word and all other words capitalised except forarticlesand shortprepositionsandconjunctions
German, and Bavarian-style sentence case	The	Vitamins	are	in	my	fresh	California	Raisins	The first word and allnounscapitalised
Sentence case	The	vitamins	are	in	my	fresh	California	raisins	The first word,proper nounsand some specified words capitalised
Mid-sentence case	the	vitamins	are	in	my	fresh	California	raisins	As above but excepting special treatment of the first word
All-lowercase	the	vitamins	are	in	my	fresh	california	raisins	All letters lowercase (unconventional in English prose)

Headings and publication titles

In English-language publications, various conventions are used for the capitalisation of words inpublication titlesandheadlines,including chapter and section headings. The rules differ substantially between individual house styles.

The convention followed by many Britishpublishers(including scientific publishers likeNatureandNew Scientist,magazines likeThe Economist,and newspapers likeThe GuardianandThe Times) and many U.S. newspapers is sentence-style capitalisation in headlines, i.e. capitalisation follows the same rules that apply for sentences. This convention is usually calledsentence case.It may also be applied to publication titles, especially in bibliographic references and library catalogues. An example of a global publisher whose English-language house style prescribes sentence-case titles and headings is theInternational Organization for Standardization(ISO).

For publication titles it is, however, a common typographic practice among both Britishand U.S. publishers to capitalise significant words (and in the United States, this is often applied to headings, too). This family of typographic conventions is usually calledtitle case.For example, R. M. Ritter'sOxford Manual of Style(2002) suggests capitalising "the first word and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs, but generally not articles, conjunctions and short prepositions".This is an old form ofemphasis,similar to the more modern practice of using a larger or boldface font for titles. The rules which prescribe which words to capitalise are not based on any grammatically inherent correct–incorrect distinction and are not universally standardised; they differ between style guides, although most style guides tend to follow a few strong conventions, as follows:

• Most styles capitalise all words except for shortclosed-classwords (certainparts of speech,namely, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions); but the first word (always) and last word (in many styles) are also capitalised, regardless of their part of speech. Many styles capitalise longer prepositions such as "between" and "throughout", but not shorter ones such as "for" and "with".Typically, a preposition is considered short if it has up to three or four letters.
• A few styles capitalise all words in title case (the so-calledstart case), which has the advantage of being easy to implement and hard to get "wrong" (that is, "not edited to style" ). Because of this rule's simplicity, softwarecase-foldingroutines can handle 95% or more of the editing, especially if they are programmed for desired exceptions (such as "FBI" rather than "Fbi" ).
• As for whether hyphenated words are capitalised not only at the beginning but also after the hyphen, there is no universal standard; variation occursin the wildand among house styles (e.g., "The Letter-Case Rule in My Book ";" Short-term Follow-up Care for Burns "). Traditional copyediting makes a distinction betweentemporary compounds(such as manynonce[novel instance]compound modifiers), in which every part of the hyphenated word is capitalised (e.g. "How This Particular Author Chose to Style HisAutumn-Apple-Picking Heading "), andpermanent compounds,which are terms that, although compound and hyphenated, are so well established that dictionaries enter them asheadwords(e.g., "Short-term Follow-up Care for Burns ").

Title case is widely used in many English-language publications, especially in the United States. However, its conventions are sometimes not followed strictly – especially in informal writing.

In creative typography, such as music record covers and other artistic material, all styles are commonly encountered, including all-lowercase letters and special case styles, such asstudly caps(see below). For example, in thewordmarksof video games it is not uncommon to use stylised upper-case letters at the beginning and end of a title, with the intermediate letters in small caps or lower case (e.g.,ArcaniA,ArmA,andDmC).

Multi-word proper nouns

Single-wordproper nounsare capitalised in formal written English, unless the name is intentionally stylised to break this rule (such ase e cummings,bell hooks,eden ahbez,anddanah boyd).

Multi-word proper nouns include names of organisations, publications, and people. Often the rules for "title case" (described in the previous section) are applied to these names, so that non-initial articles, conjunctions, and short prepositions are lowercase, and all other words are uppercase. For example, the short preposition "of" and the article "the" are lowercase in "Steering Committee of the Finance Department". Usually only capitalised words are used to form anacronymvariant of the name, though there is some variation in this.

Withpersonal names,this practice can vary (sometimes all words are capitalised, regardless of length or function), but is not limited to English names. Examples include the English namesTamar of GeorgiaandCatherine the Great,"van"and" der "inDutch names,"von"and" zu "inGerman,"de", "los", and "y" inSpanish names,"de" or "d'" inFrench names,and "ibn" inArabic names.

Some surname prefixes also affect the capitalisation of the following internal letter or word, for example "Mac" inCeltic namesand "Al" in Arabic names.

Unit symbols and prefixes in the metric system

Of the sevenSI base-unitsymbols, "A" (ampereforelectric current) and "K" (kelvinfortemperature), both named after people, are always written in upper case, whereas "s" (secondfortime), "m" (metreforlength), "kg" (kilogramformass), "cd" (candelaforluminous intensity), and "mol" (moleforamount of substance) are written in lower case.

In theInternational System of Units(SI), a letter usually has different meanings in upper and lower case when used as a unit symbol. Generally, unit symbols are written in lower case, but if the name of the unit is derived from a proper noun, the first letter of the symbol is capitalised. Nevertheless, thenameof the unit, if spelled out, is always considered a common noun and written accordingly in lower case.For example:

• 1 s (onesecond) when used for thebase unitoftime.
• 1 S (onesiemens) when used for the unit ofelectric conductanceandadmittance(named afterWerner von Siemens).
• 1 Sv (onesievert), used for the unit ofionising radiationdose (named afterRolf Maximilian Sievert).

For the purpose of clarity, the symbol forlitrecan optionally be written in upper case even though the name is not derived from a proper noun.For example, "one litre" may be written as:

• 1 l, the original form, for typefaces in which "digit one"⟨1⟩,"lower-case ell"⟨l⟩,and "upper-case i"⟨I⟩look different.
• 1 L, an alternative form, for typefaces in which these characters are difficult to distinguish, or the typeface the reader will be using is unknown. A "script l"in various typefaces (e.g.: 1l) has traditionally been used in some countries to prevent confusion; however, the separateUnicode characterwhich represents this,U+2113ℓSCRIPT SMALL L,is deprecated by theSI.Another solution sometimes seen inWeb typographyis to use a serif font for "lower-case ell" in otherwise sans-serif material (1l).

The letter case of a prefix symbol is determined independently of the unit symbol to which it is attached. Lower case is used for all submultiple prefix symbols and the small multiple prefix symbols up to "k" (forkilo,meaning 10³= 1000 multiplier), whereas upper case is used for larger multipliers:

• 1 ms, millisecond, a small measure of time ( "m" formilli,meaning 10⁻³= 1/1000 multiplier).
• 1 Ms, megasecond, a large measure of time ( "M" formega,meaning 10⁶= 1 000 000 multiplier).
• 1 mS,millisiemens,a small measure of electric conductance.
• 1 MS, megasiemens, a large measure of electric conductance.
• 1 mm, millimetre, a small measure oflength.
• 1 Mm, megametre, a large measure of length.

Use within programming languages

See also:Naming convention (programming) § Multiple-word identifiers

Some case styles are not used in standard English, but are common incomputer programming,productbranding,or other specialised fields.

The usage derives from how programming languages areparsed,programmatically. They generally separate their syntactic tokens by simplewhitespace,includingspace characters,tabs,andnewlines.When the tokens, such as function and variable names start to multiply in complexsoftware development,and there is still a need to keep thesource codehuman-readable,Naming conventionsmake this possible. So for example, a function dealing with matrix multiplication might formally be called:

• SGEMM(*),with the asterisk standing in for an equally inscrutable list of 13 parameters (inBLAS),
• MultiplyMatrixByMatrix(Matrix x, Matrix y),in some hypothetical higher levelmanifestly typedlanguage, broadly following the syntax ofC++orJava,
• multiply-matrix-by-matrix(x, y)in something derived fromLISP,or perhaps
• (multiply (x y))in theCLOS,or some newer derivative language supportingtype inferenceandmultiple dispatch.

In each case, the capitalisation or lack thereof supports a different function. In the first,FORTRANcompatibility requires case-insensitive naming and short function names. The second supports easily discernible function and argument names and types, within the context of an imperative, strongly typed language. The third supports the macro facilities of LISP, and its tendency to view programs and data minimalistically, and as interchangeable. The fourth idiom needs much lesssyntactic sugaroverall, because much of the semantics are implied, but because of its brevity and so lack of the need for capitalization or multipart words at all, might also make the code too abstract andoverloadedfor the common programmer to understand.

Understandably then, such coding conventions arehighly subjective,and can lead to rather opinionated debate, such as in the case ofeditor wars,or those aboutindent style.Capitalisation is no exception.

Camel case

Main article:Camel case

"theQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog" or "TheQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog"

Spaces andpunctuationare removed and the first letter of each word is capitalised. If this includes the first letter of the first word (CamelCase, "PowerPoint","TheQuick... ", etc.), the case is sometimes calledupper camel case(or, illustratively,CamelCase),Pascal casein reference to thePascal programming languageorbumpy case.

When the first letter of the first word is lowercase ( "iPod","eBay","theQuickBrownFox... "), the case is usually known aslower camel caseordromedary case(illustratively:dromedaryCase). This format has become popular in the branding ofinformation technologyproducts and services, with an initial "i" meaning "Internet"or" intelligent ",as iniPod,or an initial "e" meaning "electronic", as inemail(electronic mail) ore-commerce(electronic commerce).

Snake case

"the_quick_brown_fox_jumps_over_the_lazy_dog"

Punctuation is removed and spaces are replaced by singleunderscores.Normally the letters share the same case (e.g. "UPPER_CASE_EMBEDDED_UNDERSCORE" or "lower_case_embedded_underscore" ) but the case can be mixed, as inOCamlvariant constructors (e.g. "Upper_then_lowercase" ).The style may also be calledpothole case,especially inPythonprogramming, in which this convention is often used for naming variables. Illustratively, it may be renderedsnake_case,pothole_case,etc.. When all-upper-case, it may be referred to asscreaming snake case(orSCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE) orhazard case.

Kebab case

"the-quick-brown-fox-jumps-over-the-lazy-dog"

Similar to snake case, above, excepthyphensrather than underscores are used to replace spaces. It is also known asspinal case,param case,Lisp casein reference to theLisp programming language,ordash case(or illustratively askebab-case,looking similar to the skewer that sticks through akebab). If every word is capitalised, the style is known astrain case(TRAIN-CASE).

InCSS,all property names and most keyword values are primarily formatted in kebab case.

Studly caps

"tHeqUicKBrOWnFoXJUmpsoVeRThElAzydOG"

Mixed case with nosemanticorsyntacticsignificance to the use of the capitals. Sometimes onlyvowelsare upper case, at other times upper and lower case are alternated, but often it is simply random. The name comes from the sarcastic or ironic implication that it was used in an attempt by the writer to convey their owncoolness(studliness).It is also used to mock the violation of standard English case conventions by marketers in the naming of computer software packages, even when there is no technical requirement to do so – e.g.,Sun Microsystems' naming of a windowing systemNeWS.Illustrative naming of the style is, naturally, random:stUdlY cAps,StUdLy CaPs,etc..

Case folding and case conversion

In thecharacter setsdeveloped forcomputing,each upper- and lower-case letter is encoded as a separate character. In order to enable case folding and case conversion, thesoftwareneeds to link together the two characters representing the case variants of a letter. (Some old character-encoding systems, such as theBaudot code,are restricted to one set of letters, usually represented by the upper-case variants.)

Case-insensitiveoperations can be said to fold case, from the idea of folding the character code table so that upper- and lower-case letters coincide. The conversion of letter case in astringis common practice in computer applications, for instance to make case-insensitive comparisons. Many high-level programming languages provide simple methods for case conversion, at least for theASCIIcharacter set.

Whether or not the case variants are treated as equivalent to each other varies depending on the computer system and context. For example, userpasswordsare generally case sensitive in order to allow more diversity and make them more difficult to break. In contrast, case is often ignored inkeyword searchesin order to ignore insignificant variations in keyword capitalisation both in queries and queried material.

Unicode case folding and script identification

Unicodedefines case folding through the three case-mapping properties of eachcharacter:upper case, lower case, and title case (in this context, "title case" relates toligaturesanddigraphsencoded as mixed-casesingle characters,in which the first component is in upper case and the second component in lower case).These properties relate all characters in scripts with differing cases to the other case variants of the character.

As briefly discussed inUnicodeTechnical Note #26,"In terms of implementation issues, any attempt at a unification of Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic would wreak havoc [and] make casing operations an unholy mess, in effect making all casing operations context sensitive […]". In other words, while the shapes of letters likeA,B,E,H,K,M,O,P,T,X,Yand so on are shared between the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets (and small differences in their canonical forms may be considered to be of a merelytypographicalnature), it would still be problematic for a multilingualcharacter setor afontto provide only asinglecode pointfor, say, uppercase letterB,as this would make it quite difficult for a wordprocessor to change that single uppercase letter to one of the three different choices for the lower-case letter, the Latinb(U+0062), Greekβ(U+03B2) or Cyrillicв(U+0432). Therefore, the corresponding Latin, Greek and Cyrillic upper-case letters (U+0042, U+0392 and U+0412, respectively) are also encoded as separate characters, despite their appearance being identical. Without letter case, a "unified European alphabet" – such asABБCГDΔΕЄЗFΦGHIИJ...Z,with an appropriate subset for each language – is feasible; but considering letter case, it becomes very clear that these alphabets are rather distinct sets of symbols.

Methods in word processing

Most modernword processorsprovide automated case conversion with a simple click or keystroke. For example, in Microsoft Office Word, there is a dialog box for toggling the selected text through UPPERCASE, then lowercase, then Title Case (actually start caps; exception words must be lowercased individually). The keystroke⇧ Shift+F3does the same.

Methods in programming

In some forms ofBASICthere are two methods for case conversion:

UpperA$=UCASE$("a")
LowerA$=LCASE$("A")

CandC++,as well as any C-like language that conforms to itsstandard library,provide these functions in the filectype.h:

charupperA=toupper('a');
charlowerA=tolower('A');

Case conversion is different with differentcharacter sets.InASCIIorEBCDIC,case can be converted in the following way, in C:

inttoupper(intc){returnislower(c)?c–'a'+'A':c;}
inttolower(intc){returnisupper(c)?c–'A'+'a':c;}

This only works because the letters of upper and lower cases are spaced out equally. In ASCII they are consecutive, whereas with EBCDIC they are not; nonetheless the upper-case letters are arranged in the same pattern and with the same gaps as are the lower-case letters, so the technique still works.

Some computer programming languages offer facilities for converting text to a form in which all words are capitalised.Visual Basiccalls this "proper case";Pythoncalls it "title case". This differs from usualtitle casingconventions, such as the English convention in which minor words are not capitalised.

History

See also:Initial

Latin majuscule inscription on theArch of Titus(82 CE)

Papyrus fragment with old Roman cursive script from the reign ofClaudius(41–54 CE)

Example of Greek minuscule textCodex Ebnerianus(c.1100 CE)

Combined case with capital letters above small letters

Late 19th-century mixed cases

Demonstrating the use of acomposing stickin front of divided upper and lower type cases at theInternational Printing Museumin Carson, California, United States, North America

Originallyalphabetswere written entirely in majuscule letters, spaced between well-defined upper and lower bounds. When written quickly with apen,these tended to turn into rounder and much simpler forms. It is from these that the first minuscule hands developed, thehalf-uncialsand cursive minuscule, which no longer stayed bound between a pair of lines.These in turn formed the foundations for theCarolingian minusculescript, developed byAlcuinfor use in the court ofCharlemagne,which quickly spread across Europe. The advantage of the minuscule over majuscule was improved, faster readability.

InLatin,papyrifromHerculaneumdating before 79 CE (when it was destroyed) have been found that have been written in oldRoman cursive,where the early forms of minuscule letters "d", "h" and "r", for example, can already be recognised. According to papyrologistKnut Kleve,"The theory, then, that the lower-case letters have been developed from the fifth centuryuncialsand the ninth century Carolingian minuscules seems to be wrong. "Both majuscule and minuscule letters existed, but the difference between the two variants was initially stylistic rather than orthographic and the writing system was still basically unicameral: a given handwritten document could use either one style or the other but these were not mixed. European languages, except forAncient Greekand Latin, did not make the case distinction before about 1300.

The timeline of writing in Western Europe can be divided into four eras:

• Greek majuscule (9th–3rd century BCE) in contrast to the Greekuncial script(3rd century BCE – 12th century CE) and the laterGreek minuscule
• Roman majuscule(7th century BCE – 4th century CE) in contrast to the Roman uncial (4th–8th century CE),Roman half uncial,and minuscule
• Carolingianmajuscule (4th–8th century CE) in contrast to theCarolingian minuscule(around 780 – 12th century)
• Gothicmajuscule (13th and 14th century), in contrast to the early Gothic (end of 11th to 13th century), Gothic (14th century), and late Gothic (16t century) minuscules.

Traditionally, certain letters were rendered differently according to a set of rules. In particular, those letters that began sentences or nouns were made larger and often written in a distinct script. There was no fixed capitalisation system until the early 18th century. TheEnglish languageeventually dropped the rule for nouns, while the German language keeps it.

Similar developments have taken place in other alphabets. The lower-case script for theGreek alphabethas its origins in the 7th century and acquired its quadrilinear form (that is, characterised by ascenders and descenders)in the 8th century. Over time, uncial letter forms were increasingly mixed into the script. The earliest dated Greek lower-case text is theUspenski Gospels(MS 461) in the year 835.The modern practice of capitalising the first letter of every sentence seems to be imported (and is rarely used when printing Ancient Greek materials even today).

Simplified relationship between various scripts leading to the development of modern lower case of standard Latin alphabet and that of the modern variantsFraktur(used in Germanyuntil 1940s) andGaelic(used in Ireland). Several scripts coexisted such ashalf-uncialanduncial,which derive fromRoman cursiveandGreek uncial,andVisigothic,Merovingian (Luxeuil variant here)andBeneventan.TheCarolingian scriptwas the basis forblackletterandhumanist minuscule.What is commonly called "Gothic writing" is technically called blackletter (heretextualis quadrata) and is completely unrelated to Visigothic script. The letter j is i with aflourish,u and v are the same letter in early scripts and were used depending on their position in insular half-uncial and caroline minuscule and later scripts, w is a ligature of vv, in insular therunewynnis used as a w (three other runes in use were thethorn(þ), ʻféʼ (ᚠ) as an abbreviation for cattle/goods and maðr (ᛘ) for man). The letters y and z were very rarely used, in particular þ was written identically to y so y was dotted to avoid confusion, the dot was adopted for i only after late-caroline (protogothic), in beneventan script themacron abbreviationfeatured a dot above. Lost variants such asr rotunda,ligatures andscribal abbreviation marksare omitted;long sis shown when no terminal s (the only variant used today) is preserved from a given script.Humanist scriptwas the basis for Venetiantypeswhich changed little until today, such asTimes New Roman(a serifed typeface).

Type cases

The individual type blocks used in handtypesettingare stored in shallow wooden or metal drawers known as "type cases".Each is subdivided into a number of compartments (" boxes ") for the storage of different individual letters.

TheOxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Advanced Proportional Principles(reprinted 1952) indicates thatcasein this sense (referring to the box or frame used by a compositor in the printing trade) was first used in English in 1588. Originally one large case was used for each typeface, then "divided cases", pairs of cases for majuscules and minuscules, were introduced in the region of today's Belgium by 1563, England by 1588, and France before 1723.

The termsupperandlowercase originate from this division. By convention, when the two cases were taken out of the storage rack and placed on a rack on thecompositor's desk, the case containing the capitals and small capitals stood at a steeper angle at the back of the desk, with the case for the small letters, punctuation, and spaces being more easily reached at a shallower angle below it to the front of the desk, hence upper and lower case.

Though pairs of cases were used in English-speaking countries and many European countries in the seventeenth century, in Germany and Scandinavia the single case continued in use.

Various patterns of cases are available, often with the compartments for lower-case letters varying in size according to the frequency of use of letters, so that the commonest letters are grouped together in larger boxes at the centre of the case.The compositor takes the letter blocks from the compartments and places them in acomposing stick,working from left to right and placing the letters upside down with the nick to the top, then sets the assembled type in agalley.

See also

• All caps
• Alternating caps
• Camel case
• Capitalization
  • Capitalization in English
• Initial,or drop cap
• Grammatical case
• Punctuation
• Roman cursive
• Roman square capitals
• Shift key
• Small caps
• Text figures
• Unicase

Further reading

• Hamilton, Frederick W. (1918).Capitals: A Primer of Information About Capitalization with Some Practical Typographic Hints as to the Use of Capitals– viaProject Gutenberg.