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93-462: Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes . Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin , as well as Gothic , and are the current style for Coptic and Nobiin . Early uncial script most likely developed from late rustic capitals . Early forms are characterized by broad single-stroke letters using simple round forms taking advantage of

186-456: A pen , ink brush , or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skillful manner". In East Asia and the Islamic world , where more flexibility is allowed in written forms, calligraphy is regarded as a significant art form, and the form it takes may be affected by the meaning of the text or

279-406: A calligrapher are the pen and the brush . The pens used in calligraphy can have nibs that may be flat, round, or pointed. For decorative purposes, multi-nibbed pens (steel brushes) can be used. However, works have also been created with felt-tip and ballpoint pens , although these works do not employ angled lines. There are certain styles of calligraphy, such as Gothic script , that require

372-523: A calligrapher may practice both. Western calligraphy continues to flourish in the forms of wedding invitations and event invitations, font design and typography , original hand-lettered logo design, religious art , announcements, graphic design and commissioned calligraphic art, cut stone inscriptions , and memorial documents. It is also used for props , moving images for film and television, testimonials , birth and death certificates , maps, and other written works. The principal tools for

465-529: 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

558-482: A cut-down version of uncial in the famous Codex Basilicanus of Hilary , which contains sections in each of the two types of script. The terminology was continued in the mid-18th century by René Prosper Tassin and Charles François Toustain . Despite the common and well-fixed usage, half-uncial is a poor name to the extent that it suggests some organic debt to regular uncial, though both types share features inherited from their ancient source, capitalis rustica . It

651-470: 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

744-576: A few inscriptions into the 8th century, though not in any South Arabian language since Dʿmt . Early inscriptions in Ge'ez and Ge'ez script are dated to as early as the 5th century BCE, with a sort of proto-Ge'ez written in ESA since the 9th century BCE. Ge'ez literature begins with the Christianization of Ethiopia (and the civilization of Axum) in the 4th century, during the reign of Ezana of Axum . The Ge'ez script

837-465: A form of evolved Latin-based uncial hand that would probably be best compared to the later 7th to 10th century examples, though admittedly, the variations in Latin uncial are much wider and less rigid than Greek. Modern uncial has borrowed heavily from some of the conventions found in more cursive scripts, using flourishes, variable width strokes, and on occasion, even center axis tilt. In a way comparable to

930-444: 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

1023-400: 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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1116-495: A language or by the conventions of 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

1209-458: 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

1302-498: 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

1395-417: 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

1488-552: A stub nib pen. Common calligraphy pens and brushes include: The ink used for writing is usually water-based and is much less viscous than the oil-based ink used in printing. Certain specialty paper with high ink absorption and constant texture enables cleaner lines, although parchment or vellum is often used, as a knife can be used to erase imperfections and a light-box is not needed to allow lines to be visible through it. Normally, light boxes and templates are used to achieve straight lines without pencil markings detracting from

1581-526: A total of some 1,000 distinct characters. Ethiopian (Abyssinian) calligraphy began with the Ge'ez script , which replaced Epigraphic South Arabian in the Kingdom of Aksum , which was developed specifically for Ethiopian Semitic languages . In those languages that use it, such as Amharic and Tigrinya , the script is called Fidäl , which means script or alphabet. The Epigraphic South Arabian letters were used for

1674-506: Is shodō ( 書道 , literally "the way or principle of writing"); and Korean calligraphy is called seoye ( Korean :  서예 ; Hanja :  書藝 ; literally "the art of writing"); The calligraphy of East Asian characters continues to form an important and appreciated constituent of contemporary traditional East Asian culture. In ancient China , the oldest known Chinese characters are oracle bone script ( 甲骨文 ), carved on ox scapulae and tortoise plastrons , as

1767-568: Is insular , not uncial. Uncial Greek (commonly called "Byzantine lettering" by Greeks themselves) is commonly used by the Greek Orthodox Church and various institutions and individuals in Greece to this day. The Modern Greek State has also used uncial script on several occasions in official capacity (such as on seals, government documents, etc.) as did many of the Greek provisional governments during

1860-543: 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

1953-491: Is also sometimes used to refer to manuscripts that have been scribed in uncial, especially when differentiating from those penned with minuscule. Some of the most noteworthy Greek uncials are: The Petropolitanus is considered by some to contain optimum uncial style. It is also an example of how large the characters were getting. For further details on these manuscripts, see Guglielmo Cavallo Ricerche sulla Maiuscola Biblica (Florence, 1967). Modern calligraphy usually teaches

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2046-409: 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

2139-467: 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

2232-424: 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

2325-659: Is central to Tibetan culture. The script is derived from Indic scripts . The nobles of Tibet, such as the High Lamas and inhabitants of the Potala Palace , were often capable calligraphers. Tibet has been a center of Buddhism for several centuries, with said religion placing a high significance on the written word. This does not provide for a large body of secular pieces, although they do exist (but are usually related in some way to Tibetan Buddhism). Almost all high religious writing involved calligraphy, including letters sent by

2418-444: Is characteristic of later uncial usage. As the script evolved over the centuries, the characters became more complex. Specifically, around AD 600, flourishes and exaggerations of the basic strokes began to appear in more manuscripts. Ascenders and descenders were the first major alterations, followed by twists of the tool in the basic stroke and overlapping. By the time the more compact minuscule scripts arose circa AD 800, some of

2511-408: Is even more regularized. Its spread was encouraged by Emperor Mingzong of Later Tang (926–933), who ordered the printing of the classics using new wooden blocks in kaishu . Printing technologies here allowed a shape stabilization. The kaishu shape of characters 1000 years ago was mostly similar to that at the end of Imperial China; However, small changes to the characters have been made. For example

2604-422: 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

2697-405: 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

2790-564: Is one of the most famous and typical bronzeware scripts in Chinese calligraphic history. It has 500 characters inscribed onto the bronze which is the largest number of bronze inscription we have discovered so far. Moreover, each archaic kingdom of current China had its own set of characters. In Imperial China , the graphs on old steles — some dating from 200 BCE, and in the small seal script ( 小篆 xiǎo zhuàn ) style — have been preserved and can be viewed in museums even today. About 220 BCE,

2883-418: Is possible that Jerome was punning on this; he may conceivably also have been playing with the other meaning of codex , "block of wood". The term uncial in the sense of describing this script was first used by Jean Mabillon in the early 18th century. Thereafter his definition was refined by Scipione Maffei , who used it to refer to this script as distinct from Roman square capitals . The word, uncial ,

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2976-643: Is primarily created using the Ranjana script . The script itself, along with its derivatives (like Lantsa , Phagpa , Kutila ) are used in Nepal , Tibet , Bhutan , Leh , Mongolia , coastal Japan, and Korea to write " Om mani padme hum " and other sacred Buddhist texts , mainly those derived from Sanskrit and Pali . Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt . Hieroglyphs combined logographic , syllabic and alphabetic elements, with

3069-802: Is read from left to right and has been adapted to write other languages, usually ones that are also Semitic. The most widespread use is for Amharic in Ethiopia and Tigrinya in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Maya calligraphy was expressed via Maya glyphs ; modern Maya calligraphy is mainly used on seals and monuments in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Maya glyphs are rarely used in government offices; however, in Campeche , Yucatán and Quintana Roo , calligraphy in Maya languages

3162-611: Is recognizable in the use of the Latin script in Western Europe , and in the use of the Greek , Armenian , and Georgian , and Cyrillic scripts in Eastern Europe . The Latin alphabet appeared about 600 BCE in ancient Rome , and by the first century CE it had developed into Roman imperial capitals carved on stones, rustic capitals painted on walls, and Roman cursive for daily use. In

3255-845: 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

3348-561: 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,

3441-530: Is some doubt about the original meaning of the word. Uncial itself probably comes from St. Jerome 's preface to the Book of Job , where it is found in the form uncialibus , but it is possible that this is a misreading of inicialibus (though this makes little sense in the context), and Jerome may have been referring to the larger initial letters found at the beginning of paragraphs. In classical Latin uncialis could mean both "inch-high" and "weighing an ounce", and it

3534-424: 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

3627-550: Is written in Latin script rather than Maya glyphs. Some commercial companies in southern Mexico use Maya glyphs as symbols of their business. Some community associations and modern Maya brotherhoods use Maya glyphs as symbols of their groups. Most of the archaeological sites in Mexico such as Chichen Itza , Labna, Uxmal , Edzna , Calakmul , etc. have glyphs in their structures. Carved stone monuments known as stele are common sources of ancient Maya calligraphy. Calligraphy in Europe

3720-545: The Dalai Lama and other religious and secular authorities. Calligraphy is particularly evident on their prayer wheels , although this calligraphy was forged rather than scribed, much like Arab and Roman calligraphy is often found on buildings. Although originally done with a reed, Tibetan calligraphers now use chisel tipped pens and markers as well. The Philippines has numerous ancient and indigenous scripts collectively called as Suyat scripts . Various ethno-linguistic groups in

3813-514: 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

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3906-658: The Greek War of Independence . The height of uncial usage by the Modern Greek State was during the Greek military junta of 1967–74 , when even Greek Drachma coins had uncial lettering on them. Since the Metapolitefsi , the Greek State has stopped using uncial script. The term half-uncial or semi-uncial was first deployed by Scipione Maffei , Istoria diplomatica (Mantua, 1727); he used it to distinguish what seemed like

3999-872: The Kulitan script of the Kapampangan people , the badlit script of various Visayan ethnic groups , the Iniskaya script of the Eskaya people , the Baybayin script of the Tagalog people , and the Kur-itan script of the Ilocano people , among many others. Due to the diversity of suyat scripts, all calligraphy written in suyat scripts are collectively called as Filipino suyat calligraphy, although each are distinct from each other. Calligraphy using

4092-726: The Song dynasty 's printing press , and sans-serif . These are not considered traditional styles, and are normally not written. Japanese and Korean calligraphy were each greatly influenced by Chinese calligraphy. Calligraphy has influenced most major art styles in East Asia, including ink and wash painting , a style of Chinese , Japanese , and Korean painting based entirely on calligraphy and which uses similar tools and techniques. The Japanese and Koreans have also developed their own specific sensibilities and styles of calligraphy while incorporating Chinese influences. Japanese calligraphy goes out of

4185-750: The Tagbanwa people , and Palaw'an/Pala'wan of the Palaw'an people . All four scripts were inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme , under the name Philippine Paleographs (Hanunoo, Build, Tagbanua and Pala’wan) , in 1999. Due to dissent from colonialism, many artists and cultural experts have revived the usage of suyat scripts that went extinct due their replacement by the Spanish-introduced Latin alphabet. These scripts being revived include

4278-713: The simplified Chinese character set. Traditional East Asian writing uses the Four Treasures of the Study — ink brushes known as máobǐ ( 毛筆 / 毛笔 ), Chinese ink , paper, and inkstones — to write Chinese characters . These instruments of writing are also known as the Four Friends of the Study ( Korean : 문방사우/文房四友 , romanized :  Munbang sau ) in Korea. Besides the traditional four tools, desk pads and paperweights are also used. Many different parameters influence

4371-520: 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

4464-594: The Caroline evolved into the blackletter ("Gothic") script, which was more compact and made it possible to fit more text on a page. The Gothic calligraphy styles became dominant throughout Europe and, in 1454, when Johannes Gutenberg developed the first printing press in Mainz, Germany, the Gothic style was adopted for its use, making it the first typeface . In the 15th century, the rediscovery of old Carolingian texts encouraged

4557-671: The Financier thereupon restricted all legal documents to three hands, namely the Coulee, the Rhonde, (known as Round hand in English) and a Speed Hand sometimes called the Bastarda . While there were many great French masters at the time, the most influential in proposing these hands was Louis Barbedor, who published Les Ecritures Financière Et Italienne Bastarde Dans Leur Naturel c.  1650 . With

4650-594: The Philippines prior to Spanish colonization in the 16th century up to the independence era in the 21st century have used the scripts with various mediums. By the end of colonialism, only four of the suyat scripts had survived and continued to be used by certain communities in everyday life. These four scripts are Hanunó'o/Hanunoo of the Hanuno'o Mangyan people, Buhid/Build of the Buhid Mangyan people, Tagbanwa script of

4743-523: The Western alphabet and the Arabic alphabet are also prevalent in the Philippines due to its colonial past, but the Western alphabet and the Arabic alphabet are not considered as suyat, and therefore Western-alphabet and Arabic calligraphy are not considered as suyat calligraphy. Vietnamese calligraphy is called thư pháp ( 書法 , literally "the way of letters or words") and is based on Chữ Nôm and Chữ Hán ,

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4836-531: 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

4929-562: The brush absorb and by the pressure, inclination, and direction of the brush. Changing these variables produces thinner or bolder strokes, and smooth or toothed borders. Eventually, the speed, accelerations and decelerations of a skilled calligrapher's movements aim to give "spirit" to the characters, greatly influencing their final shapes. Cursive styles such as xíngshū ( 行書 / 行书 )(semi-cursive or running script) and cǎoshū ( 草書 / 草书 )(cursive, rough script, or grass script) are less constrained and faster, where movements made by

5022-515: 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

5115-414: 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

5208-446: 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

5301-418: 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

5394-404: 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

5487-503: The continued widespread use of the blackletter typefaces for written German until well into the 20th century, Gaelic letterforms, which are similar to uncial letterforms, were conventionally used for typography in Irish until the 1950s. The script is still widely used in this way for titles of documents, inscriptions on monuments, and other 'official' uses. Strictly speaking, the Gaelic script

5580-470: The creation of the humanist minuscule or littera antiqua . The 17th century saw the Batarde script from France, and the 18th century saw the English script spread across Europe and world through their books. In the mid-1600s French officials, flooded with documents written in various hands and varied levels of skill, complained that many such documents were beyond their ability to decipher. The Office of

5673-778: The destruction of the Camera Apostolica during the sack of Rome (1527) , the capitol for writing masters moved to Southern France. By 1600, the Italic Cursiva began to be replaced by a technological refinement, the Italic Chancery Circumflessa, which in turn fathered the Rhonde and later English Roundhand . In England, Ayres and Banson popularized the Round Hand while Snell is noted for his reaction to them, and warnings of restraint and proportionality. Still Edward Crocker began publishing his copybooks 40 years before

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5766-491: The emperor Qin Shi Huang , the first to conquer the entire Chinese basin, imposed several reforms, among them Li Si 's character unification, which created a set of 3300 standardized small seal characters. Despite the fact that the main writing implement of the time was already the brush, few papers survive from this period, and the main examples of this style are on steles. The clerical script ( 隸書 / 隸书 ) ( lì shū ) which

5859-484: The empire fell, its literary influence remained. The Semi-uncial generated the Irish Semi-uncial, the small Anglo-Saxon. Each region developed its own standards following the main monastery of the region (i.e. Merovingian script , Laon script , Luxeuil script , Visigothic script , Beneventan script ), which are mostly cursive and hardly readable . Christian churches promoted the development of writing through

5952-537: The evolved uncial styles formed the basis for these simplified, smaller scripts. There are over 500 surviving copies of uncial script; by far the larger number of these predate the Carolingian Renaissance . Uncial was still used, particularly for copies of the Bible , until around the 10th century outside of Ireland . The insular variant of uncial remained the standard script used to write the Irish language until

6045-414: The final result of a calligrapher's work. Physical parameters include the shape, size, stretch, and hair type of the ink brush; the color, color density and water density of the ink; as well as the paper's water absorption speed and surface texture. The calligrapher's technique also influences the result, as the look of finished characters are influenced by the quantity of ink and water the calligrapher lets

6138-460: 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..."),

6231-437: 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

6324-743: The historical Vietnamese writing system rooted in the impact of Chinese characters and replaced with the Latin alphabet as a result of French colonial influence . However, the calligraphic traditions maintaining the historical employment of Han characters continue to be preserved in modern Vietnamese calligraphy. Religious texts preservation is the most common purpose for Indian calligraphy. Monastic Buddhist communities had members trained in calligraphy and shared responsibility for duplicating sacred scriptures. Jaina traders incorporated illustrated manuscripts celebrating Jaina saints. These manuscripts were produced using inexpensive material, like palm leave and birch, with fine calligraphy. Nepalese calligraphy

6417-529: The individual words. In the Western world , the aim of calligraphy is normally regarded as only to achieve attractive writing that is usually consistent within each piece of writing, with little or no interpretation of the text attempted. Modern Western calligraphy ranges from functional inscriptions and designs to fine-art pieces where the letters may or may not be readable. Classical calligraphy differs from type design and non-classical hand-lettering, though

6510-412: 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

6603-692: The middle of the 20th century. In general, there are some common features of uncial script: In later uncial scripts, the letters are sometimes drawn haphazardly; for example, ⟨ll⟩ runs together at the baseline, bows (for example in ⟨b⟩ , ⟨p⟩ , ⟨r⟩ ) do not entirely curve in to touch their stems, and the script is generally not written as cleanly as previously. Due to its extremely widespread use, in Byzantine , African , Italian , French , Spanish , and "insular" ( Irish , Welsh , and English ) centres, there were many slightly different styles in use: There

6696-433: 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

6789-732: 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

6882-485: The new parchment and vellum surfaces, as opposed to the angular, multiple-stroke letters, which are more suited for rougher surfaces, such as papyrus . In the oldest examples of uncial, such as the fragment of De bellis macedonicis in the British Library , of the late 1st–early 2nd centuries, all of the letters are disconnected from one another, and word separation is typically not used. Word separation, however,

6975-601: The prolific copying of the Bible, the Breviary , and other sacred texts. Two distinct styles of writing known as uncial and half-uncial (from the Latin uncia , or "inch") developed from a variety of Roman bookhands . The 7th–9th centuries in northern Europe were the heyday of Celtic illuminated manuscripts, such as the Book of Durrow, Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells . Charlemagne 's devotion to improved scholarship resulted in

7068-517: The recruiting of "a crowd of scribes", according to Alcuin , the Abbot of York . Alcuin developed the style known as the Caroline or Carolingian minuscule . The first manuscript in this hand was the Godescalc Evangelistary (finished 783) — a Gospel book written by the scribe Godescalc. Carolingian remains the one progenitor hand from which modern booktype descends. In the eleventh century,

7161-521: The rulers in the Shang dynasty carved pits on such animals' bones and then baked them to gain auspice of military affairs, agricultural harvest, or even procreation and weather. During the divination ceremony, after the cracks were made , the characters were written with a brush on the shell or bone to be later carved. With the development of the bronzeware script ( jīn wén ) and large seal script ( dà zhuàn ) "cursive" signs continued . Mao Gong Ding

7254-467: 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

7347-565: The second and third centuries the uncial lettering style developed. As writing withdrew to monasteries, uncial script was found more suitable for copying the Bible and other religious texts. It was the monasteries which preserved calligraphic traditions during the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Roman Empire fell and Europe entered the early Middle Ages . At the height of the Roman Empire , its power reached as far as Great Britain; when

7440-483: The set of CJK strokes to also include local alphabets such as hiragana and katakana , with specific problematics such as new curves and moves, and specific materials ( Japanese paper , washi 和紙 , and Japanese ink). The modern Korean alphabet and its use of the circle required the creation of a new technique not used in traditional Chinese calligraphy. Mongolian calligraphy is also influenced by Chinese calligraphy, from tools to style. Tibetan calligraphy

7533-654: The shape of 广 has changed from the version in the Kangxi Dictionary of 1716 to the version found in modern books. The Kangxi and current shapes have tiny differences, while stroke order remains the same, according to the old style. Styles which did not survive include bāfēnshū , a mix of 80% small seal script and 20% clerical script . Some variant Chinese characters were unorthodox or locally used for centuries. They were generally understood but always rejected in official texts. Some of these unorthodox variants, in addition to some newly created characters, compose

7626-459: 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

7719-561: 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

7812-489: 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.) Calligraphy Calligraphy (from Ancient Greek καλλιγραφία ( kalligraphía )  'beautiful writing') is a visual art related to writing . It is the design and execution of lettering with

7905-596: 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

7998-445: 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

8091-455: The work. Ruled paper, either for a light box or direct use, is most often ruled every quarter or half an inch, although inch spaces are occasionally used. This is the case with litterea unciales (hence the name) , and college- ruled paper often acts as a guideline well. Chinese calligraphy is locally called shūfǎ or fǎshū ( 書法 or 法書 in traditional Chinese, literally "the method or law of writing"); Japanese calligraphy

8184-477: The writing implement are more visible. These styles' stroke orders vary more, sometimes creating radically different forms. They are descended from the clerical script, in the same time as the regular script ( Han dynasty ), but xíngshū and cǎoshū were used for personal notes only, and never used as a standard. The cǎoshū style was highly appreciated during Emperor Wu of Han 's reign (140–187 CE). Examples of modern printed styles are Song from

8277-461: Was brought to Ireland in the 5th century, and from there to England in the 7th century . In England, it was used to create the Old English Latin alphabet in the 8th century. Majuscule 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

8370-541: Was first used around the 3rd century (if we don't consider its earliest example a transitional variant of the rustic script, as Leonard Boyle did) and remained in use until the end of the 8th century. The early forms of half-uncial were used for pagan authors and Roman legal writing, while in the 6th century the script came to be used in Africa and Europe (but not as often in insular centres) to transcribe Christian texts. Some general forms of half-uncial letters are: Half-uncial

8463-518: 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

8556-587: Was more regularized, and in some ways similar to modern text, was also authorised under Qin Shi Huang. Between clerical script and traditional regular script, there is another transitional type of calligraphic work called Wei Bei . It started during the North and South dynasties (420 to 589 CE) and ended before the Tang dynasty (618–907). The traditional regular script ( kǎi shū ), still in use today, and largely finalized by Zhong You ( 鐘繇 , 151–230) and his followers,

8649-630: 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

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