--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, ዳንኤል ያዕቆብ (Daniel Yacob) <dya=
cob@...>
wrote:

> > In general, people drew larger letters at the
> > beginnings of things. Then they did the same at
> > the beginnings of Important Things.
>
> thanks, the use is unchanged then. this rings a bell now with the
> little history I learned in calligraphy training. so does the history
> follow as: letter glyps were the "caps" as we label them today, they
> were enlarged for emphasis, small (unemphasized) letters then morphed
> into the their own shapes over time?
>
> I'd still be interested to know the period of the lowercase evolution.
> which script developed lowercase letters first? when did the others
> follow?

The Carolingians already used to have the very first letters in
capitalis, then the first lines in uncials, then the rest in
minuscules. However, I don't doubt that similar emphatizations were
already in use. It's strange that in the blackletter scripts, which
developed through the Middle Ages and early modern times from the
Carolingian script, the uppercase letters were based rather on the
uncials than on the capitalis. In the Italian renaissance, the
Carolingian minuscules were revived (many Latin texts were written in
Carolingian hand), together with the capitalis for upper case letters
which by that time had already become usual.

It must have been about the 16th and 17th century that many scripts
evolved to a capitalization of more and more words, but in most
languages, the Grammarians cut this development, except for Germany
and Denmark, where the Grammarians generalized these tendencies
demanding that all nouns be capitalized. The lucky Danish abandoned
this after World War 2.

gry@...:
j. 'mach' wust