Le Petite Rante : Doesn't English have two different cases?
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"Major and minor case" - what is that? Are you referring to ordinary capitals vs. small capitals? In Norwegian, we call "upper" and "lower" case "big" and "small" letters ("store" and "små" in Norwegian), but I have never before seen them referred to as "major" and "minor" in English. Is that something else? The terms upper and lower case came with lead type: The setters had a row of boxes with A to Z lead types (and I suppose non-letters following the 26 letter boxes), and then a second row of boxes with a to z lead types, below the A to Z types: 'A' in the upper box, 'a' in the lower box immediately below it.
"Maiuscolo" and "minisculo" (meaning major and minor) are the etymological source of the correct grammatical terms.
Member 7989122 wrote:
The terms upper and lower case came with lead type: The setters had a row of boxes with A to Z lead types (and I suppose non-letters following the 26 letter boxes), and then a second row of boxes with a to z lead types, below the A to Z types: 'A' in the upper box, 'a' in the lower box immediately below it.
This is wonderfully true, because it's a superb example of how jargon phrases/terms get added to common usage in a language; and it's good that you've spread that knowledge here. But major and minor are still the "correct" terms, even if they're not used anywhere as near as much. It's like medical terms. Who the Hell calls the common cold anything other than "the common cold"? (Tip: the answer to the question contains the words "medical" and "experts", often in that order)
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Why on God's (or anyone else's) green earth (or equivalent living quarters) do people ignore the fact that English has more than one case and write everything in lower case? I mean, are we using teletypes still? Are these languages invented by ee cummings? Do these people write in all lower case anywhere else in life? also || while i'm on a roll -> why on earth would anyone creating a language these days :?i'm talking to you rust:? choose to use such an alphabet soup instead of making it more readable{} i mean c++ has an excuse, but a new language doesn't.
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Dean Roddey wrote:
people ignore the fact that English has more than one case and write everything in lower case
Well...in all fairness, if someone's not going to bother to use proper capitalization, I'd much rather read something all in lowercase than all in uppercase. You've gotta pick your battles. I'll settle for this.
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"Maiuscolo" and "minisculo" (meaning major and minor) are the etymological source of the correct grammatical terms.
Member 7989122 wrote:
The terms upper and lower case came with lead type: The setters had a row of boxes with A to Z lead types (and I suppose non-letters following the 26 letter boxes), and then a second row of boxes with a to z lead types, below the A to Z types: 'A' in the upper box, 'a' in the lower box immediately below it.
This is wonderfully true, because it's a superb example of how jargon phrases/terms get added to common usage in a language; and it's good that you've spread that knowledge here. But major and minor are still the "correct" terms, even if they're not used anywhere as near as much. It's like medical terms. Who the Hell calls the common cold anything other than "the common cold"? (Tip: the answer to the question contains the words "medical" and "experts", often in that order)
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
I call them Fred.
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"Maiuscolo" and "minisculo" (meaning major and minor) are the etymological source of the correct grammatical terms.
Member 7989122 wrote:
The terms upper and lower case came with lead type: The setters had a row of boxes with A to Z lead types (and I suppose non-letters following the 26 letter boxes), and then a second row of boxes with a to z lead types, below the A to Z types: 'A' in the upper box, 'a' in the lower box immediately below it.
This is wonderfully true, because it's a superb example of how jargon phrases/terms get added to common usage in a language; and it's good that you've spread that knowledge here. But major and minor are still the "correct" terms, even if they're not used anywhere as near as much. It's like medical terms. Who the Hell calls the common cold anything other than "the common cold"? (Tip: the answer to the question contains the words "medical" and "experts", often in that order)
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
BTW, anyone is interested in such things should watch the excellent documentary "Helvetica" which is a history of that ubiquitous type face and parenthetically of type faces in general.
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