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I saw this on Dictionary.com and thought it might be of interest.
Dale
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Why do we capitalize I?
February 29, 2012
Why do we capitalize the first-person pronoun, I? The short answer is because we do. But that’s not a very satisfactory answer. Even though it feels natural to English speakers, capitalizing I is unusual. In fact, English is the only language that does. Germanic and Romantic languages typically have some conventions for capitalizing proper nouns, like Deutschland (in German) or Place de la Concorde (in French), but English is the only one that selfishly insists on capitalizing the personal pronoun. We do not, you will recall, even capitalize we.
Wondering why we capitalize letters at all? Learn the full story here.
It turns out that this unusual convention was a bit of an accident. In Old and Middle English, the word for “I” was closer to its German cousin, “ich,” and it was often spelled “ic.” At this point, the word was not capitalized. However, the pronunciation changed over time and so did the spelling, losing the consonant c.
At first, the new word, i, was left lowercase. However, it began to grow taller than other words. It grew for a silly reason: a single letter looks bad. Look at it: i. How sad. By the time Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in the late 1300s, I, the personal pronoun, was slightly taller than its lowercase equivalent. From that point on, it was typically capitalized.
The only other accepted single-letter word in English, a, is a larger presence on the page. Its appearance isn’t as offensive as the thin i.
Today, though, some of us are regressing. In e-mails and instant message conversations, capitalization conventions are backsliding.
Do you think the capitalized I will go extinct?
http://hotword.dictionary.com/whycapitali/
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Yes, it needs it, otherwise it looks like an exclamation point standing on its head !i
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(03-04-2012, 03:11 AM)Erthona Wrote: Why do we capitalize I?
Billy doesn't 
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and how has that worked 
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I think there is a potential explanation for this. It may be that, as 'ic' faded, a little dot was placed on top, to indicate that a letter had been dropped. Legal copyists until this century did this kind of thing, using something like a Spanish tilde, and in French, where there is a circumflex (^) it almost always represents an 's' which has been dropped. In English, it would make entire sense to join the small i with its dot, for convenience, in cases where it occurs frequently, ie, in capitals, or when representing the first pers. sing. Would we all not do that, if copying were our daily task? One also sees similar abbreviations in churches, and other places with some sort of memorial, where the Latin has been hacked to pieces, but with a few 'diacritics' added -- for those of us with little Latin, and less Greek, it is a pain to make our task of making some use of what knowledge we picked up, harder than it need be. 
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Me: A name i call myself. i(I) used to use "me" as a familiar and/or
less egomaniacal form of 'I'. But when 'i' started coming into use,
i(I) started using 'i' instead. My reasoning was that when incorrect
capitalization was compared to improper subjectivication, the former
would be considered the lesser of the two evils. Of course, me holds
'me' in reserve for those situations that call for greater evil. And,
double-of-course, ME double-capitalizes 'me' whenever I is feeling
epically proportioned and in need of some strict objectivicationing.
Future:
i(I) predict that the English first-person singular personal pronoun
will return to its original lower case form for four reasons:
1. Most search engines (like Google) make very little use of case
in their searches. This isn't because they can't (try "Will" and
"will"); but because they base their search results on actual user's
searches and, even more importantly, on advertiser's desires. Neither
of which, it seems, places much importance on case. So... as the great
Ned Needham said: "If i can't find it, it doesn't exist."
2. Using uppercase for emphasis such as: "this IS important" or "WHAT?"
has become quite popular. This leads to this phrase: "it's not what I
think that matters" meaning something different than "it's not what i
think that matters".
3. Voice recognition software.
4. Touch screens.
P.S. Not that lower case "i" is going to be commonly used that much longer
either: Written literacy rates are decreasing. They are decreasing faster
in countries with high proportions of 'smart phones'. There's HUGE debate
as to its cause/effect/existence... write (or, if you can't, draw) your own
conclusion(s).
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions
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I like I. I only occasionally use i, to indicate that the individual is not terribly important or has been subverted for some reason... and I find I don't really care what other languages use for their personal pronouns, simply that English has a convention (and if it's been in use for 800 years or more, it's a fairly well established convention) that I'm perfectly content to follow. If other people eschew the I, I don't particularly mind, but in my poetry I will always be distinct from i for the simple reason that I never make grammatical errors unless they're intentional (or I'm really not paying attention).
It could be worse
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Are I and i pronounced the same? I'm sure to some 6 year olds i is more of an "eh" than an "eye" :/
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i is I and I is i and so shall it be. it'll even have an I in I'll.
personally i think language like everything else is dynamic, language as can be seen from history, changes. we got from ich to ic to i, i think if i can help I to change to i i'll have done something good i will have left my mark.
veil of trash; i think kids pronounce the lower case different so they can learn to differentiate between upper and lower. adults would usually only say i or k or K.
i also thinks caps will disappear at the beginning of sentences over time as well. i think text speak will play a major role in how we write thanx;
it won't b long b4uc I as i
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In some schools the upper case and lower case differentiates the short and long vowel sounds.
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yes but the norm is adults don't say the soft sounds of lower case letters that kids do.
i think we originally capped the i because of ego.
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(03-05-2012, 12:40 PM)billy Wrote: i think we originally capped the i because of ego.
That's what I thought too. "i" might seem a little... diminished for writers' tastes, and over time they felt the need to give the attribution more emphasis.
PS. If you can, try your hand at giving some of the others a bit of feedback. If you already have, thanks, can you do some more?
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hence I and not We,i suppose
- the partially blind semi bald eagle
Bastard Elect
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"we" is not as egoistically biased as "I"!
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(03-08-2012, 07:19 AM)Erthona Wrote: "we" is not as egoistically biased as "I"!
We don't......I do.
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unless spoken by one who thinks he or she is the we, such as a queen, or king. or meglomaniac hehe.
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The Royal wee!
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do royals wee?
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Oh, oui, oui, mon ami!
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
A Persons name is Capped, a Name of a Place is Capped. So I is capped but yet me aint.. Aint Me and I both the same person.. (At least when I take my meds...) So if I is not a i then me should be Me. (As in byte Me)
Actually I have no idea what I am typing about but My Fingers seem to be saying something.
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