national lowercase day

everyone is to type in lowercase all day today because it is national lowercase day. in ancient rome, the latin alphabet consisted of capital letters all of the same size called roman majuscule. after the fall of rome, capital letters that were more rounded emerged, called uncial script. half-uncial came about around the same time, with some letters that resembled today's lowercase letters. uncial and half-uncial were used throughout medieval times.

tracing their roots to the court of french king charlegmagne, the lowercase letters of today are called miniscule script. they were used by monks and scholars, who were scribes who made manuscripts by hand. this script was faster to write than uncial. this shift from uppercase to lowercase was on account of its handwriting ease, not because of writing rules; there weren't many capitalization rules in europe before 1300.

when johannes gutenberg introduced the letterpress printing process circa 1439, it quickly spread around europe. letters were individual pieces called moveable metal type. the letters were stored by their type in wood cases. capital letters came to be stored in the upper (higher) cases. miniscule letters were stored in the lower cases. this is where the names uppercase and lowercase came from.

the terms were first used in the eighteenth century and were soon embraced by the public. this was also the time of the standardization of grammar. so uppercase and lowercase not only became names but were used in specific circumstances, such as uppercase being used for proper nouns. while uppercase letters are used for proper nouns on most days, they aren't today, because it's national lowercase day!

How to Observe national lowercase day

celebrate national lowercase day by typing everything in lowercase today. send text messages and emails in all lowercase. if you have more important documents you need to write today, you'll just have to type them in all lowercase as well. you might run into issues such as not being able to login to your accounts today, but this is a sacrifice you have to make today to fully embrace national lowercase day. you could also use the day to learn more about the proper times to use lowercase and uppercase letters.

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