OT: what's with the 'i'?

[Bill Oliver]

The reason I was taught was the transition from the Old English equivalent "ich."   When the word dropped from three letters to one letter, it was capitalized to point out that it was a separate word rather than a typographical error.  This doesn't make a lot of sense in modern typography, but I can see where that might be the case in hand-written scripts, sort of like the ampersand.

Here's a reference that says the same thing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03wwln-guestsafire-t.html?_r=0

billo

On Fri, 1 Feb 2013, Marko Vojinovic wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:08 +0000
> Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Just out of interest, why do some people use the non-existent word
>> "i", not to mention other violations of capitalization rules when 1)
>> their Shift key is clearly not broken, and 2) they aren't the poet
>> e.e. cummings? I've seen a number of people do this (admittedly a tiny
>> minority) and never understood it. Do they think it's cool? Are they
>> expressing their inner rebel? Were they punished by their English
>> teacher at school? Is hitting Shift too much effort? Enquiring minds
>> want to know.
>
> Speaking of that, I never understood why is the "I" capitalized in
> English?
>
> Or, to rephrase it in your words, what's with the "I"? ;-)
>
> To begin with, I don't know of any other language which capitalizes
> this word. Also, while my English teachers were always very
> explicit that the "I" should always be capitalized, none of them has
> ever managed to give me a reasonable answer _why_ this is so.
>
> While I agree with you that correct spelling is something worth taking
> care of in e-mail communication, I was always wondering about the
> completely "randomized" spelling rules in English language. Or rather
> the utter absence of any real rules. In other languages, those
> rules often actually make sense, and make the language easier to read
> and write.
>
> For example, the concept of "spelling competitions" in elementary
> schools was completely foreign to me until I heard about it from English
> schoolchildren. In most other languages, knowing how to properly spell
> words does not need any advanced knowledge, and basically is not
> considered to be a skill worth competing over.
>
> But English spelling is soooo contrived that people had to invent
> spell-checkers to deal with it. :-D
>
> And let's not even start with the even more contrived problem of the
> proper *pronunciation* of the written English. ;-)
>
> Best, :-)
> Marko
>
>
>
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