TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION G. 356 



I leave out of consideration forms like script and black- 

 letter, which all educated persons are required to learn, and 

 which still further multiply the methods in which a given cha- 

 racter may be written, or printed. I pass over the innumerable 

 "fancy" styles now fashionable, by which the standard forms 

 are tortured almost into illegibility. I take the four alphabets — 

 roman and italic, large and small — and I find (excluding trifling 

 changes of form) forty-nine separate and distinct characters to 

 represent twenty-six letters. Only seven of the small letters 

 are the same in form as the corresponding capitals ; for the 

 other nineteen, entirely different symbols are used. In the 

 italic, four more appear. Sixteen letters have two distinct 

 symbols, four have three. It is no doubt demonstrable that 

 the A, a, and a, for example, are all modifications of the same 

 primitive character — the fact remains that they have diverged 

 into quite distinct forms. 



It is clear that we must seek in the alphabet of capitals the 

 true standard forms. This is demonstrated by the fact that 

 entire pages of books, monumental inscriptions, etc., may be 

 printed in these characters without infringing any grammatical 

 rule. In many such cases the use of the small letters is ex- 

 cluded. It is not possible to reverse the rule : a page without 

 capitals would be considered a grammatical absurdity. The 

 great mass of printing and writing, tlien, is done in characters 

 deviating from the standard. The question arises : Why are 

 these two forms retained ? The answer is that the small 

 letters are not in the true sense letters at all, but arbitrary 

 signs. They have a negative value, as distinguished from the 

 positive value of the capitals. When we write the second " a " in 

 " Aaron " differently from the first, it implies that it is not the 

 initial. The word is as legibly and quite as correctly written 

 entirelj^ in capitals (in the leading article of an English news- 

 paper it would be so printed — in the text it would not). In 

 fact, the device is equivalent to that by which in Greek a 

 final sigma, or in Hebrew a final mem, is distinguished by a 

 complete difference in form from the same letter used as an 

 initial or medial. 



Much of the space of every grammar is occupied in defining 

 rules of capitalisation ; but the whole subject is still unsettled. 

 Formerly every noun was distinguished by a capital, and every 

 proper noun by italic. Now the capital is reserved (generally 

 speaking) for the proper noun, but names of books, of ships, 

 and of stage characters are still commonly represented by 

 italics. The usage in regard to nouns derived from proper 

 nouns is quite unsettled. Some writers capitalise certain 

 pronouns to convey the idea of dignity ; others so distinguish 

 words of any denomination which it is desired to emphasize. 

 In the best English newspapers, one system is adopted for the 



