Minuscule letters were invented to write on paper and similar materials, because curved strokes had lower probability of tearing the material (as opposed to majuscule letters' angular features, adapted to carving in stone or similar materials). Now that we're not restricted by materials, might as well only use one case
Is that well documented? I thought it was just because it makes writing more fluid, and people tend to evolve towards fluid movements when they repeat the same ones all the time as it requires less energy. Ex: high-level musicians or sport practicionners.
I've heard that that's the reason alphabets from languages in the South East Asia (like Thai or Khmer) is all about circles as to not tear the writing material back in the day - leaves.
I did a deep dive on this recently (my day job is in architecture, and in the US we infamously MAKE ALL NOTES ON DRAWINGS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY WE'VE DONE IT SINCE WE HAND LETTERED IN BLOCK PRINT SO THAT DIFFERENT DRAFTERS' SHEETS ALL LOOKED CONSISTENT) and it turns out that's 100% just an acclimation effect -- the old conventional wisdom of skilled readers recognizing lower-case word shapes doesn't hold water. If tomorrow we deleted lower-case letters from every Latin font on earth, given time we'd be able to read all-caps text just as fast as we currently read sentence case.
Which was disappointing for me to find out, since I REALLY HATE SHOUTING AT CONTRACTORS THROUGH THE PAGE ALL THE TIME and wish I could make a convincing case for sentence case, but oh well.
That's good to know. And in the premise of this thread it's relevant. However, since we're used to sentence case now, it still makes sense to keep it that way unless there's a compelling reason to switch.
On the other hand, street signs in Sweden, where I come from, are uppercase. I was completely used to that despite reading mostly sentence case in any other situation. However, since I moved to Denmark, where street signs are sentence case, I now feel like it takes slightly longer to parse signs when I go to Sweden. I guess if I'm correct, that's a case for quick acclimatation, as this happened over only a few years.
Come to think of it, is there actually much of any point to capital vs lowercase letters? You know what the first word of a sentence is anyway because of the period before, and names can be identified by context. Why do we even have capitalization in the first place?
As I mentioned in another comment, the original reason we have majuscule and minuscule letters is the difference in materials they were written on. Having them persist in the typesetting is in fact more of a historical artifact
Sure all that fraud sucks, but there are tech fixes (which also have problems - SSL certificates prevent old computers from using the internet without a translating proxy)
You are telling me that one of the most prolific and influential artist of our time, 5 time Grammy Award winning musician Weird Al Yankovic, would run his own social media account on a niche platform to crack jokes and shitpost on the Internet, as if celebrities are just regular people at the end of the day?
I don't know, maybe this is one of those "novelty account" I've heard so much about here.
I ran into this exact scenario with an acquaintance on Facebook back when I engaged in such silly endeavors.
Her name was Al and I couldn't figure out for the life of me if it was Al or AI. I think I finally did ask, but damn I could NOT figure it out on my own. I suppose there must've been some way to copy paste it into word and configure to all caps, but the thought never occurred to me.
Man, I wish you could just use TS without some kind of preprocessor.
But I also wish JS had less footguns like "oh, this function returns an array-like object that has half of array methods... But not the one you want right now".
I know it's a joke but there is a sliver of truth to it since there have been multiple reports of these tech companies ignoring copyrights to feed their algorithms and I'm sure his works are included.
AL-generated content. I get it now
I really do hate that sans serif completely fucks I l | o O 0 among others.
I should have those things on top and bottom l should have a curl. But no...
Fwiw Verdana is the currently the recommended best ADA font.
Helvetica (and it’s clones), not all sans serifs.
DIN has nice little feet on the l, as do:
Thank you for listening to my Typeface Talk.
"Is that an English letter in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
Or : a lesson in typography, and why lower-case L ought to have a serif or curve.
Fʀᴀɴᴋʟʏ, I'ᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ᴇᴠᴇɴ ᴄᴏɴᴠɪɴᴄᴇᴅ ᴡᴇ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ʟᴏᴡᴇʀᴄᴀsᴇ ʟᴇᴛᴛᴇʀs ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪʀsᴛ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ. Sᴇᴇᴍs ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ's ᴊᴜsᴛ ᴀsᴋɪɴɢ ғᴏʀ ᴛʀᴏᴜʙʟᴇ.
I read this in the voice of Death from Discworld. I didn't even realize I had an internal voice actor assigned to him.
Christopher Lee
After reading this comment, I too read the comment it was responding to in the voice of Discworld's Death. Something both warm and somewhat metallic.
Minuscule letters were invented to write on paper and similar materials, because curved strokes had lower probability of tearing the material (as opposed to majuscule letters' angular features, adapted to carving in stone or similar materials). Now that we're not restricted by materials, might as well only use one case
Is that well documented? I thought it was just because it makes writing more fluid, and people tend to evolve towards fluid movements when they repeat the same ones all the time as it requires less energy. Ex: high-level musicians or sport practicionners.
They tried documenting it, but the material kept tearing
I've heard that that's the reason alphabets from languages in the South East Asia (like Thai or Khmer) is all about circles as to not tear the writing material back in the day - leaves.
I'm a big fan of Chinese seal script used for stone engravings just like the look
Make Writing (adapted for) Stone Again
They're also way faster to read though.
I did a deep dive on this recently (my day job is in architecture, and in the US we infamously MAKE ALL NOTES ON DRAWINGS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY WE'VE DONE IT SINCE WE HAND LETTERED IN BLOCK PRINT SO THAT DIFFERENT DRAFTERS' SHEETS ALL LOOKED CONSISTENT) and it turns out that's 100% just an acclimation effect -- the old conventional wisdom of skilled readers recognizing lower-case word shapes doesn't hold water. If tomorrow we deleted lower-case letters from every Latin font on earth, given time we'd be able to read all-caps text just as fast as we currently read sentence case.
Which was disappointing for me to find out, since I REALLY HATE SHOUTING AT CONTRACTORS THROUGH THE PAGE ALL THE TIME and wish I could make a convincing case for sentence case, but oh well.
That's good to know. And in the premise of this thread it's relevant. However, since we're used to sentence case now, it still makes sense to keep it that way unless there's a compelling reason to switch.
On the other hand, street signs in Sweden, where I come from, are uppercase. I was completely used to that despite reading mostly sentence case in any other situation. However, since I moved to Denmark, where street signs are sentence case, I now feel like it takes slightly longer to parse signs when I go to Sweden. I guess if I'm correct, that's a case for quick acclimatation, as this happened over only a few years.
Can I ask what your night job is?
Toddler dad, mostly.
Come to think of it, is there actually much of any point to capital vs lowercase letters? You know what the first word of a sentence is anyway because of the period before, and names can be identified by context. Why do we even have capitalization in the first place?
It's a plot by Big Typesetting to sell more letters. Wake up sheeple!
https://xkcd.com/1013
As I mentioned in another comment, the original reason we have majuscule and minuscule letters is the difference in materials they were written on. Having them persist in the typesetting is in fact more of a historical artifact
We need capitals, as otherwise shouting online would have to move to bold
Could always use italics, or excessive exclamation marks!!! Or * shouts at u * cringey online roleplay syntax.
Sure but that all takes extra keystrokes. Caps lock is cruise control for shouting
Also the *shouts at you* tag was classic in chat things, but places like this need escapes to make them look right
Hmm. Still harder to read and comes across as yelling, even when the capital letters are itty-bitty...
𐑯𐑴𐑐. 𐑿 𐑒𐑨𐑯 𐑛𐑵 𐑢𐑦𐑞𐑬𐑑 𐑤𐑴𐑼𐑒𐑱𐑕 𐑓 𐑖𐑫𐑼.
It should be illegal to have a font where Il| are not all easily distinguishable.
lI|Also, O and 0. And there's a special place in Hell for font designers that make 1 look like I
O.0
Straight to jail
STRAlGHT T0 JAlL Y0U SAY?
And lose jokes like Al's?
Sure all that fraud sucks, but there are tech fixes (which also have problems - SSL certificates prevent old computers from using the internet without a translating proxy)
Ah yes but that font
looks kinda ugly tbh :(Hard disagree all my homies fw consolas
Give me Cascadia Code or give me death!
Careful, the programmers may rise up!
Discord solved it by giving
lthe same tail thatthas, I wish more sans-serif fonts did thatThen you have the
1l1L problemI'm not ready for AI AL.
Ready or not, Al be baming
If that's an official account, that's actually amazing. Also an amazing comment.
Seems to be official. He hasn't set up the domain but a bunch of prior posts and interactions make it seem real enough
Oh Al, you little scamp!
Generated by the state of Alabama?
That would be straight indiscriminate racist ramblings.
I don’t know if racism can be indiscriminate…
Racism can only be done indiscriminately. There is no thought put into it.
It was a pun about the word “discriminate” (the verb)
Oh lol I see
So it's Tay?
I remember Tay! That was something else
Aluminum?
You are telling me that one of the most prolific and influential artist of our time, 5 time Grammy Award winning musician Weird Al Yankovic, would run his own social media account on a niche platform to crack jokes and shitpost on the Internet, as if celebrities are just regular people at the end of the day?
I don't know, maybe this is one of those "novelty account" I've heard so much about here.
Honestly seems on brand for him.
every posted
I ran into this exact scenario with an acquaintance on Facebook back when I engaged in such silly endeavors.
Her name was Al and I couldn't figure out for the life of me if it was Al or AI. I think I finally did ask, but damn I could NOT figure it out on my own. I suppose there must've been some way to copy paste it into word and configure to all caps, but the thought never occurred to me.
On PC, you can open the browser console and type in
it's usually on F12.
Simply pasting the string would give you the answer as the console uses a programming font
Fair, but I'm trying to trick them into learning js here :P
Why would you do such a horrible thing?
Well, ignoring the mire of ancient bad idea compatibility, it's nice to just have a REPL wherever you have a browser.
At least trick them into leaning ts.
Man, I wish you could just use TS without some kind of preprocessor.
But I also wish JS had less footguns like "oh, this function returns an array-like object that has half of array methods... But not the one you want right now".
https://www.fontspace.com/unicode/analyzer
Pasting into notepad is good enough, where I and l actually look different.
The uppercase 'i' and the lowercase 'L' each have to enter the Thunderdome, and have just one emerge alive.
I always copy just the I, l, or rarely | and search for it with any search engine. It usually clears it up
https://convertcase.net/
What a weird guy.
This is the best pun I've ever seen in my life.
Big Al is just not as bad is regular AI
God dammit.
I know it's a joke but there is a sliver of truth to it since there have been multiple reports of these tech companies ignoring copyrights to feed their algorithms and I'm sure his works are included.
It's easy, just need to look at the context.
Then look again.
And repeat.
By default, all chat bots should be Al-generating AI. The world would be better off.
That's how you develop new messaging protocols.
The second one. I've spent enough time on the Internet to say that capital I is smaller than lowercase l.