Talk:Letter case

Comment
I know CamelCase and snake_case but what about ala-lisp-case (supported by Perl 6 btw), does it go by another name? 82.67.232.89 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC).

The article uses both "upper case" and "uppercase", and "lower case" and "lowercase". Both seems OK, but I think they should be used consistently in the article (possibly with a comment noting that both spellings are acceptable). Andreas Kågedal

reference 18 comment
Reference 18 is a link to a lodash doc that defines "kebab-case" using a link to this Wikipedia article, I think it should be removed 50.59.178.98 (talk) 00:16, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Merger?
Should this be merged into Case (orthography)? - Gwalla 22:35, May 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * This, perhaps. Sentence case, no. Dysprosia 22:47, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

''It would have helped to formally close the discussion at this point, by the time (2 months later and now 6 years ago) that the merge was done (tho in the direction opposite to that proposed). There is no reason to delete the following comments, but all but one of the opinions they express should probably should be weighed in light of the fact that the respective opiners clearly did not take the trouble to investigate what content was proposed to be merged with the accompanying article. Likewise, most of them failed to adequately weigh the previous comments. --Jerzy•t 23:01, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree. They all seem to be variations on a theme of type and typesetting. Although, I think there ought to be separate encompassing articles to define capitalization (Title case, Sentence case, Camel case, All caps) apart from typesetting, which are not neccessarily connected (the latter being "craft work" while the former being "a form of writing"). — Down10 T + C 08:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Disagree. I do believe that these are interrelated subjects, and should assuredly reference each other; however, majuscule referers to a distinct type of historical writing. I feel that including it with typesetting would ignore the history. @ Kaibab  TALK  23:15, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
 * In case you didn't notice, it's a bit late now. 66.229.160.94 09:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Disagree. CAPITAL LETTERS are a unique expressive medium, truly deserving of a disinct Wikipedia entry. Whiskey Pete 23:33, 10 February 2007 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, I disagree with the merge proposal. Just saying. Matt Yeager ♫ ( Talk? ) 04:54, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree What on earth is there to say about lower case letters, or capital letters, that isn't about the distinction between the two? Not enough to justify a separate article!  Strong agree. ciphergoth (talk) 14:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Disagree I came to the article looking for a definition and description with examples and got straight to the information I wanted. I'd been reading an article about the Staffordshire Hoard in which some inscriptions are described as Insular Majuscule, and didn't want to get into a discursive article about typography. I think that this case illustrates that there is something to say about capitals and lower-case that isn't about the distinction beteen them. Separated out, this forms a useful and informative article about the one case that interested me, and offers the links further into the subject if I had the time (or inclination). For people that love categorising things in a way that seems neat to them, rolling this article into a more general one might seem logical, but for someone who's interested solely in Majuscule without getting into the subject, this article is fine as it stands. (I'm a firm believer in tempting someone to be interested by leading them into a topic, rather than bludgeoning them over the head with all the information in one go!) Moderate disagreement. If there's a Wiki definition somewhere that covers this word briefly, then and only then might this article start looking redundant.
 * Disagree This article is fine as it is. --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:47, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Capital sz?
Since Unicode 5.1, the phrase "An example of a letter without both forms is the German ß (ess-tsett), which exists only in minuscule" is not entirely correct anymore. I think that should be mentioned here, but do not see how to do that nicely. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.148.224.39 (talk) 08:16, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Unicode didn't change anything. It says right there in the code chart "uppercase is 'SS'"&#8212;because it doesn't have its own upper-case character. (Besides that, Unicode represents writing systems, it doesn't own them and doesn't change their rules.)&#8212;Largo Plazo (talk) 12:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There is an uppercase sz, however! See german wikipedia for reference.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.66.10.152 (talk) 10:12, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The discussion about ß is interesting but seems out of all proportion for the introduction to this article Tesspub (talk) 16:47, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The paragraph about the ß is rather long, it leaves the impression of being complete. I would also like to have the 5.1 upper case character mentioned - at least in a footnote or with a link to further information. The rule ß becomes SS in all upper case is not always correct, I know of one important exception: in German passports surnames are written all upper case, but the ß is never replaced by SS because it would be a loss of information. After all ss is not equal ß by law. And someone having it one way is not allowed to write his name the other way, and vice versa. So an all-uppercase name still technically has a lower case character, which obviously causes problems in computing. Hence the upper case ß (finally). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.99.236.141 (talk) 08:43, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

UK and US spellings coincide.
Capitalization or capitalisation? I note that User:Dreaded Walrus fixed this inconsistency quite recently in Capitalization. The best (Oxford) references confirm the 'z' spelling as acceptable in both UK and US canons. So I've made the change in this article as well. Bjenks (talk) 02:16, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Oxford spelling rules specify that "z" is used when the root word is of Greek origin and "s" when the root word is of Latin origin (i.e. entered English via Latin, even if it started life as Greek). "Capital" entered English from Latin via French and therefore takes an "s". Tesspub (talk) 16:24, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Since when did "Oxford" become the authority on English? Last I checked Noah Webster put the kibosh on that idea over 200 years ago when "Oxford" decided that cookie wasn't really a word (have they been able to wrap their head around that, yet?). A less subjective view can be obtained using the computerized search of COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American (English)) which shows capitalize used 1346 times and capitalise used 5 times.  In the British National Corpus the frequency was 84 to 169, respectively.  Jingoism aside,  most will conclude that "capitalise" will have a short stay on the endangered list on its way to extinction.  Now, back to my milk and cookies. N0w8st8s (talk) 18:48, 14 July 2011 (UTC)n0w8st8s
 * I, too, went on and changed from "capitalise" with an S to "capitalize" with a Z, but this is more like the sneakers/trainers, pants/trousers, color/colour, honor/honour, favor/favour, favorite/favourite, soccer/football or practice/practise war. --Marce 13:58, 24 April 2014 (UTC)


 * According to FAQ no "correction" is needed, except when the article is inconsistent, or pertains to a particular nation. Unfortunately there are now so many revolting revolutionaries in Her Majesty's colonies showing continual disregard for the wishes of The Crown that I fear the Internet appears doomed to descend into a miserable tomb of misspelling, cookie consumption and all manner of other depravities.  Yours impartially, 103.1.70.123 (talk) 21:53, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Other forms of case - Hiragana and katakana
I'm not sure about the analogy of hiragana and katakana to English (or Roman) cases and/or italics. It's somewhat correct in that one or the other can be used where it wouldn't normally be to create emphasis, but it creates emphasis as a secondary effect unlike case or italics. Hiragana is generally used for words native to the Japanese language while katakana is used for foreign loan words and foreign proper names, or where a phonetic transcription of a word normally written in kanji is preferred. Emphasis is created when the wrong one is used because it is usually notably incorrect for the context, whereas italics are specifically intended to create emphasis. It's sort of a difficult quirk of the Japanese language to explain, however, so I'm wondering if it belongs in the context of this article. RockinHobbit (talk) 22:47, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I have no idea why this is in this section - however, I am not a native speaker, only a fluent speaker of Japanese as a second language, and so will defer to a native speaker who is also an expert in matters like this. It's obvious no such person has seen this text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.5.254.54 (talk) 15:33, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the analogy between hiragana/katakana and Roman/italics is reasonable but inappropriate and potentially confusing in this article Tesspub (talk) 16:26, 1 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree. I think it is confusing to suggest that katakana/hiragana is analogous to upper/lower case. Since zero out of four people support its inclusion I have deleted it. 86.130.66.65 (talk) 03:41, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Title case
Whether or not the matter requires more discussion, it was at least erroneous to say
 * ... varying conventions are used for capitalizing words in publication titles and headlines.... The main examples are (from most to least capitals used):

Some, probably most, of the listed conventions may be less important than the things ineligible for that list. These include down-casing of "unimportant words", without a rigorous principle for specifying them, or even with the intent of context determining what is important. For example, two different short-story plots would justify the titles
 * ... And this is my Red Corvette

or
 * ... And This is my Red Corvette

or
 * ... And this is My Red Corvette

respectively. --Jerzy•t 21:56, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Upper and lower case are not consecutive in ASCII
"the letters of upper and lower cases are spaced out equally. In ASCII they are consecutive, whereas with EBCDIC they are not"

Either i'm misunderstanding the intended meaning, or this is flat-out wrong! There are 6 characters—[\]^_`—between majuscule Z and minuscule a in the ASCII character set. Whilst in terms of codepoints 5 of these can be considered opposite case of {|}~@, lexicographically they are punctuation and accentuation symbols—not letters. —überRegenbogen (talk) 17:59, 16 July 2010 (UTC)


 * That's not what it's talking about. What it means is that A-Z are consecutive in ASCII, and a-z are also consecutive.  This contrasts with EBCDIC, which splits the letters up into A-I, J-R, and S-Z ranges. —DanBishop (talk) 06:30, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Consistency of case description
The lede itself currently uses all three of: "lowercase", "lower case", and "lower-case". I don't want to start WWIII, but could one be picked as the standard? Cheers. GFHandel &#9836; 00:41, 20 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The three examples are listed in the wrong order.
 * "lower case" would have come first, as the words start off as separate words.
 * "lower-case" would have come second, as the words are provisionally linked.
 * "lowercase" would come third, as the words are finally combined in a single word.


 * the hyphen might be retained where the letters are hard to read.
 * first "hall light"
 * second "hall-light"
 * third "halllight" - the triple "l" is difficult to read.


 * Hyphens also aid correct pronunciation.
 * Ku-ring-gai, a locality in Sydney,
 * Koo-wee-up, a locality in Victoria.  Tabletop (talk) 13:07, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Arabic and Hebraic
I don't think that in Arabic and Hebraic alphabets there are no capital letters. In fact, they do require letters of bigger size, but they are final letters instead of the initial ones, like in Latin and Greek alphabets since Renaissance. You should also say that during Ancient times there were non capital letters in Latin and Greek. And during Middle Age capital letters were used only at the beginning of a paragraph, not inside a sentence. Lele giannoni (talk) 13:30, 5 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The Hebrew (not "Hebraic") alphabet final forms are not really bigger than non-final forms (though four of the five special final forms have descenders). And Arabic final letterforms are not really bigger than isolated letterforms.  These contextual forms do not allow any choice (except in a few aberrant loanwords with פ in Modern Hebrew), so there's no functional similarity with capital letters in European alphabets. AnonMoos (talk) 15:57, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

The lead
From the lead:


 * "Most Western languages (certainly those based on the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian alphabets, and Coptic alphabets) use multiple letter-cases in their written form as an aid to clarity."

"Certainly" sounds like WP:OR. I think it should be changed to "including". Toccata quarta (talk) 11:27, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

do Indic / Brahmic scripts have upper case vs lower case distinctions?
this issue isn't addressed in Brahmic scripts and not clear on google either. I guess people from South Asia could clarify this from direct experience. 76.119.30.87 (talk) 17:24, 24 November 2014 (UTC)


 * No (though vowel sounds are written differently at the beginning of a word vs. in the middle of a word). AnonMoos (talk) 15:59, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Titlecase
"Titlecase" redirects to this article, but is not explained very well here... AnonMoos (talk) 16:00, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Non-Latin alphabets
Do any non-Latin alphabets have different letter cases? Seems like a huge omission to not even mention that other alphabets exist. --Surachit (talk) 22:04, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
 * While that would be a huge omission, the article does indeed mention them. See
 * § Bicameral alphabets in the article
 * § The lead, above, which is dated 13 April 2013, almost exactly two years before your comment
 * --Thnidu (talk) 00:58, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Take this pig take.24.7cageslave@Gmail.com ß
ß Piggyray (talk) 09:03, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Poem case?
Looking at these cases, I am wondering if there is a name for the case in which the first letter of each line is capitalised. Some poems use such a case. (Ping me when you respond)--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:51, 8 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I think that's called the case in which the first letter of each line is capitalised. There's no need for a special word for it, it's just a stylistic eccentricity. Some poems, especially modern ones, do not capitalise line-initials, as e.g., the works of e.e.cummings
 * Nuttyskin (talk) 13:02, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

larger and smaller
It's not actually about size. A 24pt lowercase a will be larger than a 6pt uppercase a. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.136.228.159 (talk) 11:11, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

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Tricameral?
Cyrillic is listed with bicameral alphabets, but one of the many good new/bad news surprises in learning Russian is the startling variety of italic forms in contrast to the big and little cases. It would be interesting to learn how many other alphabets have this characteristic. Italic type btw. is disappointingly latin-centric. Sparafucil (talk) 20:44, 15 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Italic forms are really just adaptations to handwriting, and probably reflect how Cyrillic letterforms could be converted with relative ease into the shapes which a Roman-educated writing hand was accustomed to make.
 * Nuttyskin (talk) 13:19, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Lisp predates that irrelevant jQuery reference by so many decades that it makes the kebab case naming RIDICULOUS!
everything is in the title — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.81.235.71 (talk) 08:39, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, yes. It's just that apparently nobody ever established a "sexy" name for the naming conventions used by Lispish languages. Anyway, I think that the section Letter_case feels a bit out of place in the article, and a simple reference to Naming_convention (programming) may be better. – Tea2min (talk) 11:49, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The names include the word case by analogy to camel-case and Pascal-case, but they really don't have anything to do with case per se. I mean, the casing used for snake-case and kebab-case is identical. The only difference between them is the (non-cased) word separator. Largoplazo (talk) 12:00, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

UD?
UD? Kayou1488 (talk) 19:31, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
 * .  General Ization Talk  19:38, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Greek iota subscript
Is the use of the iota subscript in later Greek writing worth mentioning? TomS TDotO (talk) 15:17, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's just a diacritic, no relation to letter case. Largoplazo (talk) 13:50, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Cryptic subjects
Given that entries are supposed to add to a discussion of how to improve the main article, are not entries on cryptic subjects, (such as UD? and English), which can mean nothing to the general reader, and probably mean nothing to anyone, an abuse of this facility? Nuttyskin (talk) 13:26, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I just removed English. UD? could have been a good-faith question by somebody who didn't know what "UD." (which appears in the article) was and might have wondered if it was a mistake requiring correction. It appears it had an outcome in that somebody added a clarification to the article. Yes, it would be nice if more people would communicate in full sentences and provide context for what they're talking about. Largoplazo (talk) 13:52, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Letters comprising multiple symbols
The moment that I accessed this page I was aware of a problem. The entire article refers to letters without consideration that some lettes are comprised of multiple letters in other languages. The property "case" does not apply to letters - it applies to symbols (linguistics) or characters (printing/ data processing). As a simple example, the welsh letter pronounced "dee" is written "dd" in miniscule and "Dd" in majiscule. In both cases it uses two english "letters"/ characters "d". The entire article should be rewritten as should a whole load of articles that depend on it (eg capitalisation". Precious47140 (talk) 22:26, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Cardiff University (logo).svg believe what you're talking about is discussed in the Exceptional letters and digraphs section. I don't see what distinction you're drawing for this purpose between letters, symbols and characters: people use upper- and lower-case in handwriting. Also, you left out the difference between ordinary upper-case and all-caps upper-case for ligatures, as in the case of Welsh with for example, 'd', 'Dd', and as seen in the all-caps logo of Cardiff University shown here, 'DD'. Largoplazo (talk) 22:49, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think it does. The following facts about welsh are from the University of South Wales course in the welsh language that I took in 2021.
 * These various "double" forms are separate letters not digraphs. Neither are they ligatures. They are part of the welsh alphabet which is comprised of letters and are separate from the single letters of the same form. It is a choice as to how the letters are represented in visible form with the use of the so-called latin form only finally agree upon about 100 years ago.
 * A symbol is a graphical entity representing something else. The IPA is full of symbols which in that particular example represent sounds. Symbols are used to "write" languages down.
 * A character is, in the context suggested, a symbol as defined by ISO/IEC 8859-14:1998. Upper case and lower case characters are different entries in the list numbered from 0 to 255. There are many more characters in welsh than there are letters mainly because of accents.There are even more symbols because of italic, underline and bold.
 * Also, don't confuse capitalisation with case. All sorts of things appear in graphic designs that don't occur in language. Welsh has only two cases.
 * I look to Wikipedia for definitions. In the language area it disappoints. I care about this because i am trying to program natural language interpretation for welsh because english "AI" is useless at it. Precious47140 (talk) 00:20, 30 April 2024 (UTC)