Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally majuscule ) and smaller lowercase (more formally minuscule ) in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that 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 and pronunciation and are typically treated identically when sorting in alphabetical order .
78-451: " ABCDEFU " (also known by its radio-edited title " ABC (Nicer) "; stylized in all lowercase ) is the major-label debut single by American singer Gayle , released on August 13, 2021, through Atlantic and Arthouse Records . It was co-written by Gayle with Sara Davis and David Pittenger, and produced by Pete Nappi . The song is the lead single from Gayle's debut EP A Study of the Human Experience Volume One . "ABCDEFU" reached number one on
156-451: A play on words incorporating the first six letters of the alphabet with the addition of the twenty-first, to form an initialism for the profane phrase " F uck yo U ". Sonically, the song is characterized by "minimalistic sonics" and "jagged guitar work", while it "reaches its climax with a massive sing-a-long chorus". The song has been a viral hit on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram . Emily Zemler of Rolling Stone praised
234-422: A "grammar" in the sense that most linguists use, particularly as they are prescriptive in intent rather than descriptive . Constructed languages (also called planned languages or conlangs ) are more common in the modern-day, although still extremely uncommon compared to natural languages. Many have been designed to aid human communication (for example, naturalistic Interlingua , schematic Esperanto , and
312-529: A common typographic practice among both British and 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 called title case . For example, R. M. Ritter's Oxford 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
390-470: A descending element; also, various diacritics can add to the normal height of a letter). 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, t are the letters with ascenders, and g, j, p, q, y are the ones with descenders. In addition, with old-style numerals still used by some traditional or classical fonts, 6 and 8 make up
468-517: A discipline in Hellenism from the 3rd century BC forward with authors such as Rhyanus and Aristarchus of Samothrace . The oldest known grammar handbook is the Art of Grammar ( Τέχνη Γραμματική ), a succinct guide to speaking and writing clearly and effectively, written by the ancient Greek scholar Dionysius Thrax ( c. 170 – c. 90 BC ), a student of Aristarchus of Samothrace who founded
546-435: A discrepancy between contemporary usage and that which has been accepted, over time, as being standard or "correct". Linguists tend to view prescriptive grammar as having little justification beyond their authors' aesthetic tastes, although style guides may give useful advice about standard language employment based on descriptions of usage in contemporary writings of the same language. Linguistic prescriptions also form part of
624-418: A distinct Montenegrin standard is a matter of controversy, some treat Montenegrin as a separate standard lect, and some think that it should be considered another form of Serbian. Norwegian has two standards, Bokmål and Nynorsk , the choice between which is subject to controversy : Each Norwegian municipality can either declare one as its official language or it can remain "language neutral". Nynorsk
702-465: A grammar, or as a grammar book . A reference work describing the grammar of a language is called a reference grammar or simply a grammar . A fully revealed grammar, which describes the grammatical constructions of a particular speech type in great detail is called descriptive grammar. This kind of linguistic description contrasts with linguistic prescription , a plan to marginalize some constructions while codifying others, either absolutely or in
780-444: A handwritten sticky note , may not bother to follow the conventions concerning capitalisation, but that is because its users usually do not expect it to be formal. Similar orthographic and graphostylistic conventions are used for emphasis or following language-specific or other rules, including: In English, a variety of case styles are used in various circumstances: In English-language publications, various conventions are used for
858-400: A hyphen ( upper-case and lower-case – particularly if they pre-modify another noun), or as a single word ( uppercase and lowercase ). These terms originated from the common layouts of the shallow drawers called type cases used to hold the movable type for letterpress printing . Traditionally, the capital letters were stored in a separate shallow tray or "case" that
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#1732884303825936-497: A language later in life usually involves more direct instruction. The term grammar can also describe the linguistic behaviour of groups of speakers and writers rather than individuals. Differences in scale are important to this meaning: for example, English grammar could describe those rules followed by every one of the language's speakers. At smaller scales, it may refer to rules shared by smaller groups of speakers. A description, study, or analysis of such rules may also be known as
1014-458: A marker to indicate the beginning of a line of verse independent 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's Big Brother . Other languages vary in their use of capitals. For example, in German all nouns are capitalised (this
1092-498: A more general sense. It can also be seen as customary to capitalise any word – in some contexts even a pronoun – referring to the deity of a monotheistic 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
1170-417: A non-standard or variant spelling. Miniscule is still less likely, however, to be used in reference to lower-case letters. The glyphs of 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
1248-459: A particular discipline. In orthography , the uppercase is reserved for special purposes, such as the first letter of a sentence or of a proper 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 drawings are typically labelled entirely in uppercase letters, which are easier to distinguish individually than
1326-509: A place of trying so hard to be the nice, respectful ex-girlfriend, to the point where it was negatively affecting me". In an interview with Tongue Tied Mag , Gayle explained the inspiration behind the song: "After the breakup, I was trying really, really hard to be a nice person. Like overcompensating for it. Like the week after we broke up, I called him and was like, 'hey bud!' and 'what's up my friend?!'." On March 31, 2021, Gayle stated on Instagram that she had dislocated her middle finger , and
1404-410: A school (attached to a cathedral or monastery) that teaches Latin grammar to future priests and monks. It originally referred to a school that taught students how to read, scan, interpret, and declaim Greek and Latin poets (including Homer, Virgil, Euripides, and others). These should not be mistaken for the related, albeit distinct, modern British grammar schools. A standard language is a dialect that
1482-616: A school on the Greek island of Rhodes. Dionysius Thrax's grammar book remained the primary grammar textbook for Greek schoolboys until as late as the twelfth century AD. The Romans based their grammatical writings on it and its basic format remains the basis for grammar guides in many languages even today. Latin grammar developed by following Greek models from the 1st century BC, due to the work of authors such as Orbilius Pupillus , Remmius Palaemon , Marcus Valerius Probus , Verrius Flaccus , and Aemilius Asper . The grammar of Irish originated in
1560-422: A set of prescriptive norms only, excluding the aspects of a language's grammar which do not change or are clearly acceptable (or not) without the need for discussions. The word grammar is derived from Greek γραμματικὴ τέχνη ( grammatikḕ téchnē ), which means "art of letters", from γράμμα ( grámma ), "letter", itself from γράφειν ( gráphein ), "to draw, to write". The same Greek root also appears in
1638-452: A standard defining nationality or ethnicity . Recently, efforts have begun to update grammar instruction in primary and secondary education. The main focus has been to prevent the use of outdated prescriptive rules in favor of setting norms based on earlier descriptive research and to change perceptions about the relative "correctness" of prescribed standard forms in comparison to non-standard dialects. A series of metastudies have found that
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#17328843038251716-414: A video where she stated "I'm out of [song] ideas" and asked followers to comment song ideas. She said, "Comment anything and I'll try my best to turn it into a song." Nancy Berman, a marketing manager at Atlantic Records, commented, asking for a song that incorporates the alphabet. Within a few days, Gayle uploaded another video of her strumming the chorus of the song. According to Gayle, the song "came from
1794-543: Is also known as spinal case , param case , Lisp case in reference to the Lisp programming language , or dash case (or illustratively as kebab-case , looking similar to the skewer that sticks through a kebab ). If every word is capitalised, the style is known as train case ( TRAIN-CASE ). In CSS , all property names and most keyword values are primarily formatted in kebab case. "tHeqUicKBrOWnFoXJUmpsoVeRThElAzydOG" Mixed case with no semantic or syntactic significance to
1872-409: Is an old form of emphasis , 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: Title case
1950-421: Is backed by 27 percent of municipalities. The main language used in primary schools, chosen by referendum within the local school district, normally follows the official language of its municipality. Standard German emerged from the standardized chancellery use of High German in the 16th and 17th centuries. Until about 1800, it was almost exclusively a written language, but now it is so widely spoken that most of
2028-493: Is based on the local dialects of Buenos Aires and Montevideo ( Rioplatense Spanish ). Portuguese has, for now, two official standards , Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese . The Serbian variant of Serbo-Croatian is likewise divided; Serbia and the Republika Srpska of Bosnia and Herzegovina use their own distinct normative subvarieties, with differences in yat reflexes. The existence and codification of
2106-467: Is capitalised, as are all proper nouns . Capitalisation in English, in terms of the general orthographic rules independent of context (e.g. title vs. heading vs. text), is universally standardised for formal writing. Capital letters are used as the first letter of a sentence, a proper noun, or a proper adjective . The names of the days of the week and the names of the months are also capitalised, as are
2184-424: Is capitalised. Nevertheless, the name of the unit, if spelled out, is always considered a common noun and written accordingly in lower case. For example: For the purpose of clarity, the symbol for litre can 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: The letter case of a prefix symbol is determined independently of
2262-422: Is no technical requirement to do so – e.g., Sun Microsystems ' naming of a windowing system NeWS . Illustrative naming of the style is, naturally, random: stUdlY cAps , StUdLy CaPs , etc.. In the character sets developed for computing , each upper- and lower-case letter is encoded as a separate character. In order to enable case folding and case conversion, the software needs to link together
2340-405: Is not available. Acronyms (and particularly initialisms) are often written in all-caps , depending on various factors . Capitalisation is the writing of a word with its first letter in uppercase and the remaining letters in lowercase. Capitalisation rules vary by language and are often quite complex, but in most modern languages that have capitalisation, the first word of every sentence
2418-403: Is not significant and syntax is highly significant in an analytic language. For example, Chinese and Afrikaans are highly analytic, thus meaning is very context-dependent. (Both have some inflections, and both have had more in the past; thus, they are becoming even less synthetic and more "purely" analytic over time.) Latin , which is highly synthetic , uses affixes and inflections to convey
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2496-399: Is promoted above other dialects in writing, education, and, broadly speaking, in the public sphere; it contrasts with vernacular dialects , which may be the objects of study in academic, descriptive linguistics but which are rarely taught prescriptively. The standardized " first language " taught in primary education may be subject to political controversy because it may sometimes establish
2574-845: Is removed and spaces are replaced by single underscores . 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 in OCaml variant constructors (e.g. "Upper_then_lowercase"). The style may also be called pothole case , especially in Python programming, in which this convention is often used for naming variables. Illustratively, it may be rendered snake_case , pothole_case , etc.. When all-upper-case, it may be referred to as screaming snake case (or SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE ) or hazard case . "the-quick-brown-fox-jumps-over-the-lazy-dog" Similar to snake case, above, except hyphens rather than underscores are used to replace spaces. It
2652-561: Is sentence-style capitalisation in headlines, i.e. capitalisation follows the same rules that apply for sentences. This convention is usually called sentence 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 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). For publication titles it is, however,
2730-424: 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 as studly caps (see below). For example, in
2808-698: The Billboard Global 200 and, in the United States, peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 . Outside the US, "ABCDEFU" topped the charts in 16 countries. In 2022, the song was nominated for Song of the Year for the 65th Annual Grammy Awards . The song marks the first single release since the Nashville-based singer signed with Atlantic Records / Arthouse Records in 2021. On her TikTok account, Gayle uploaded
2886-514: The English alphabet (the exact representation will vary according to the typeface and font used): (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 with Q and sometimes J having
2964-588: The First Grammatical Treatise , but became influential only in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. In 1486, Antonio de Nebrija published Las introduciones Latinas contrapuesto el romance al Latin , and the first Spanish grammar , Gramática de la lengua castellana , in 1492. During the 16th-century Italian Renaissance , the Questione della lingua was the discussion on the status and ideal form of
3042-520: The wordmarks of 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 , and DmC ). Single-word proper nouns are capitalised in formal written English, unless the name is intentionally stylised to break this rule (such as e e cummings , bell hooks , eden ahbez , and danah boyd ). Multi-word proper nouns include names of organisations, publications, and people. Often
3120-616: The 12th century, compares the Hebrew language with Arabic in the Islamic grammatical tradition . Belonging to the trivium of the seven liberal arts , grammar was taught as a core discipline throughout the Middle Ages , following the influence of authors from Late Antiquity , such as Priscian . Treatment of vernaculars began gradually during the High Middle Ages , with isolated works such as
3198-429: The 16th century onward, such as Grammatica o Arte de la Lengua General de Los Indios de Los Reynos del Perú (1560), a Quechua grammar by Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás . From the latter part of the 18th century, grammar came to be understood as a subfield of the emerging discipline of modern linguistics. The Deutsche Grammatik of Jacob Grimm was first published in the 1810s. The Comparative Grammar of Franz Bopp ,
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3276-596: The 7th century with Auraicept na n-Éces . Arabic grammar emerged with Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali in the 7th century. The first treatises on Hebrew grammar appeared in the High Middle Ages , in the context of Midrash (exegesis of the Hebrew Bible ). The Karaite tradition originated in Abbasid Baghdad . The Diqduq (10th century) is one of the earliest grammatical commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. Ibn Barun in
3354-450: The Italian language, initiated by Dante 's de vulgari eloquentia ( Pietro Bembo , Prose della volgar lingua Venice 1525). The first grammar of Slovene was written in 1583 by Adam Bohorič , and Grammatica Germanicae Linguae , the first grammar of German, was published in 1578. Grammars of some languages began to be compiled for the purposes of evangelism and Bible translation from
3432-453: The Serpent ) Digital download and streaming ABC (The Wild Remix) Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. All lowercase 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 the grammar of a language or by the conventions of
3510-467: The X-ray scan from the hospital was used for the single's cover art. The song achieved mainstream success within a few months after release, surpassing over 500 million global streams as of March 2022. Gayle has since released different versions of the song, including the demo, a "chill version", and an "angrier version". The original song reached 1 billion streams on July 9, 2023. The accompanying music video
3588-446: The advent of written representations , formal rules about language usage tend to appear also, although such rules tend to describe writing conventions more accurately than conventions of speech. Formal grammars are codifications of usage which are developed by repeated documentation and observation over time. As rules are established and developed, the prescriptive concept of grammatical correctness can arise. This often produces
3666-578: The ascender set, and 3, 4, 5, 7 , and 9 the descender set. A minority of writing systems use two separate cases. Such writing systems are called bicameral scripts . These scripts include the Latin , Cyrillic , Greek , Coptic , Armenian , Glagolitic , Adlam , Warang Citi , Garay , Zaghawa , Osage , Vithkuqi , and Deseret scripts. Languages written in these scripts use letter cases as an aid to clarity. The Georgian alphabet has several variants, and there were attempts to use them as different cases, but
3744-564: The capitalisation of the following internal letter or word, for example "Mac" in Celtic names and "Al" in Arabic names. In the International 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
3822-414: The capitalisation of words in publication titles and headlines , including chapter and section headings. The rules differ substantially between individual house styles. The convention followed by many British publishers (including scientific publishers like Nature and New Scientist , magazines like The Economist , and newspapers like The Guardian and The Times ) and many U.S. newspapers
3900-446: The case is usually known as lower camel case or dromedary case (illustratively: dromedaryCase ). This format has become popular in the branding of information technology products and services, with an initial "i" meaning " Internet " or "intelligent", as in iPod , or an initial "e" meaning "electronic", as in email (electronic mail) or e-commerce (electronic commerce). "the_quick_brown_fox_jumps_over_the_lazy_dog" Punctuation
3978-418: The code too abstract and overloaded for the common programmer to understand. Understandably then, such coding conventions are highly subjective , and can lead to rather opinionated debate, such as in the case of editor wars , or those about indent style . Capitalisation is no exception. "theQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog" or "TheQuickBrownFoxJumpsOverTheLazyDog" Spaces and punctuation are removed and
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#17328843038254056-404: 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 less syntactic sugar overall, 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
4134-418: The explanation for variation in speech, particularly variation in the speech of an individual speaker (for example, why some speakers say "I didn't do nothing", some say "I didn't do anything", and some say one or the other depending on social context). The formal study of grammar is an important part of children's schooling from a young age through advanced learning , though the rules taught in schools are not
4212-475: The explicit teaching of grammatical parts of speech and syntax has little or no effect on the improvement of student writing quality in elementary school, middle school or high school; other methods of writing instruction had far greater positive effect, including strategy instruction, collaborative writing, summary writing, process instruction, sentence combining and inquiry projects. The preeminence of Parisian French has reigned largely unchallenged throughout
4290-460: 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 called upper camel case (or, illustratively, CamelCase ), Pascal case in reference to the Pascal programming language or bumpy case . When the first letter of the first word is lowercase (" iPod ", " eBay ", "theQuickBrownFox..."),
4368-437: The first-person pronoun "I" and the vocative particle " O ". There are a few pairs of words of different meanings whose only difference is capitalisation of the first letter. Honorifics and personal titles showing 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
4446-693: The former German dialects are nearly extinct. Standard Chinese has official status as the standard spoken form of the Chinese language in the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China (ROC), and the Republic of Singapore . Pronunciation of Standard Chinese is based on the local accent of Mandarin Chinese from Luanping, Chengde in Hebei Province near Beijing, while grammar and syntax are based on modern vernacular written Chinese . Modern Standard Arabic
4524-416: The framework of a standard language . The word grammar often has divergent meanings when used in contexts outside linguistics. It may be used more broadly as to include orthographic conventions of written language such as spelling and punctuation, which are not typically considered as part of grammar by linguists, the conventions used for writing a language. It may also be used more narrowly to refer to
4602-416: The highly logical Lojban ). Each of these languages has its own grammar. Syntax refers to the linguistic structure above the word level (for example, how sentences are formed) – though without taking into account intonation , which is the domain of phonology. Morphology, by contrast, refers to the structure at and below the word level (for example, how compound words are formed), but above
4680-454: The history of modern French literature. Standard Italian is based on the speech of Florence rather than the capital because of its influence on early literature. Likewise, standard Spanish is not based on the speech of Madrid but on that of educated speakers from more northern areas such as Castile and León (see Gramática de la lengua castellana ). In Argentina and Uruguay the Spanish standard
4758-402: The level of individual sounds, which, like intonation, are in the domain of phonology. However, no clear line can be drawn between syntax and morphology. Analytic languages use syntax to convey information that is encoded by inflection in synthetic languages . In other words, word order is not significant, and morphology is highly significant in a purely synthetic language, whereas morphology
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#17328843038254836-412: The lowercase when space restrictions require very small lettering. In mathematics , on the other hand, uppercase and lower case letters denote generally different mathematical objects , which may be related when the two cases of the same letter are used; for example, x may denote an element of a set X . The terms upper case and lower case may be written as two consecutive words, connected with
4914-433: The modern written Georgian language does not distinguish case. All other writing systems make no distinction between majuscules and minuscules – a system called unicameral script or unicase . This includes most syllabic and other non-alphabetic scripts. In scripts with a case distinction, lowercase is generally used for the majority of text; capitals are used for capitalisation and emphasis when bold
4992-732: The name, though there is some variation in this. With personal 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 names Tamar of Georgia and Catherine the Great , " van " and "der" in Dutch names , " von " and "zu" in German , "de", "los", and "y" in Spanish names , "de" or "d'" in French names , and "ibn" in Arabic names . Some surname prefixes also affect
5070-490: The passion of Gayle's live renditions of the piece. April Bredael of Tongue Tied Magazine thought the song "adds to a growing list of accomplishments" of the singer with tracks that are "authentic, honest, and unapologetic". Digital download and streaming (Nicer version) Digital download and streaming (Demo version) Digital download and streaming (Chill version) Digital download and streaming (Angrier version) Digital download and streaming (featuring Royal &
5148-467: 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 an acronym variant of
5226-418: The same information that Chinese does with syntax. Because Latin words are quite (though not totally) self-contained, an intelligible Latin sentence can be made from elements that are arranged almost arbitrarily. Latin has a complex affixation and simple syntax, whereas Chinese has the opposite. Prescriptive grammar is taught in primary and secondary school. The term "grammar school" historically referred to
5304-649: The starting point of modern comparative linguistics , came out in 1833. Frameworks of grammar which seek to give a precise scientific theory of the syntactic rules of grammar and their function have been developed in theoretical linguistics . Other frameworks are based on an innate " universal grammar ", an idea developed by Noam Chomsky . In such models, the object is placed into the verb phrase. The most prominent biologically oriented theories are: Parse trees are commonly used by such frameworks to depict their rules. There are various alternative schemes for some grammar: Grammars evolve through usage . Historically, with
5382-538: The study of such rules, a subject that includes phonology , morphology , and syntax , together with phonetics , semantics , and pragmatics . There are, broadly speaking, two different ways to study grammar: traditional grammar and theoretical grammar . Fluency in a particular language variety involves a speaker internalizing these rules, many or most of which are acquired by observing other speakers, as opposed to intentional study or instruction . Much of this internalization occurs during early childhood; learning
5460-459: The term majuscule an apt descriptor for what much later came to be more commonly referred to as uppercase letters. Minuscule refers to lower-case letters . The word is often spelled miniscule , by association with the unrelated word miniature and the prefix mini- . That has traditionally been regarded as a spelling mistake (since minuscule is derived from the word minus ), but is now so common that some dictionaries tend to accept it as
5538-561: The tokens, such as function and variable names start to multiply in complex software development , and there is still a need to keep the source code human-readable, Naming conventions make this possible. So for example, a function dealing with matrix multiplication might formally be called: In each case, the capitalisation or lack thereof supports a different function. In the first, FORTRAN compatibility requires case-insensitive naming and short function names. The second supports easily discernible function and argument names and types, within
5616-519: The two characters representing the case variants of a letter. (Some old character-encoding systems, such as the Baudot code , are restricted to one set of letters, usually represented by the upper-case variants.) Grammar In linguistics , grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses , phrases , and words . The term may also refer to
5694-596: 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" (for kilo , meaning 10 = 1000 multiplier), whereas upper case is used for larger multipliers: Some case styles are not used in standard English, but are common in computer programming , product branding , or other specialised fields. The usage derives from how programming languages are parsed , programmatically. They generally separate their syntactic tokens by simple whitespace , including space characters , tabs , and newlines . When
5772-445: The use of the capitals. Sometimes only vowels are 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 own coolness ( 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
5850-540: The words graphics , grapheme , and photograph . The first systematic grammar of Sanskrit originated in Iron Age India , with Yaska (6th century BC), Pāṇini (6th–5th century BC ) and his commentators Pingala ( c. 200 BC ), Katyayana , and Patanjali (2nd century BC). Tolkāppiyam , the earliest Tamil grammar, is mostly dated to before the 5th century AD. The Babylonians also made some early attempts at language description. Grammar appeared as
5928-564: Was located above the case that held the small letters. Majuscule ( / ˈ m æ dʒ ə s k juː l / , less commonly / m ə ˈ dʒ ʌ s k juː l / ), for palaeographers , is technically any script whose letters have very few or very short ascenders and descenders, or none at all (for example, the majuscule scripts used in the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 , or the Book of Kells ). By virtue of their visual impact, this made
6006-630: Was previously common in English as well, mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries), while in Romance and 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 capitalise formal polite pronouns , for example De , Dem ( Danish ), Sie , Ihnen (German), and Vd or Ud (short for usted in Spanish ). Informal communication, such as texting , instant messaging or
6084-511: Was released alongside the single. The video was shot via a camcorder at a low resolution to evoke early 2000s home videos . In the music video, the singer and her friends visit and look around her ex's home. According to the digital sheet music published at musicnotes.com by Warner Music Publishing, "ABCDEFU" is written in the key of E major with a tempo of 122 beats per minute , with Gayle's vocals ranging from G ♯ 3 to C ♯ 5 . The song's title and lyrical content are
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