One of the things i struggle with as a rather lousy typist is the caps key. Its use adds yet more effort to my already fumbling efforts to hammer out something legible using only the first two fingers of each hand. I never learned to touch-type and so don’t have that flowing, effortless movement touch-typists enjoy when using a keyboard.
To the contrary, my spasmodic typing style is painful and awkward. Bringing the caps key into play is yet another monkey wrench thrown into my work. I’ve noticed that lately i have been avoiding the use of this key, except for at the start of a sentence. To date, no one who reads my stuff has complained, so obviously it’s no big deal to most people.
All this got me to thinking. Exactly who invented capital letters? What made them think the things were needed? Are capital letters a part of most or all languages of the world?
Apparently, they’re not. They seem to pop up mostly in romance languages – those derived from ancient latin such as english, german, french, spanish, italian… by contrast, hebrew, arabic and the many asian languages don’t have them.
I say, let’s follow the latter example and do away with capital letters, at least most of the time. As far as i’m concerned a capital letter is generally only useful when used with a preceding period to help designate the end of a sentence and the beginning of a new one. For me, leaving capital letters out makes a sentence or paragraph simply “read” easier – everything flows better. Finding capital letters in the body of a sentence is like encountering a jarring bump on a normally smooth road.
Don’t get me wrong; sometime capital letters do have sometimes have their place in certain situations. Witness the following:
I helped my uncle Jack off the horse
I helped my uncle jack off the horse
This is an example of how a capital letter can be valuable in clarifying the content of a sentence. But ask yourself (after you are through laughing at my wit), how often do you see a need to do that?
You snotty touch-typists will sneer at this post, and the linguistic purists among you will be aghast at my laziness and lack of respect for doing things the right way. So, for any of you two types of people who may be reading this, I will point out another good example of when using capital letters is the right way to do things…. namely to make a point:
BITE ME! 
