remember when you were being taught to write, how the big letters differed from the small ones? remember the blue-red-blue lines that guided your hand to form the proper height of the letters, telling you not to go beyond the red when making baby a's? write properly, said teacher, start your sentences and proper nouns with capitals.
recall your writing exercises, when you were made to write rows upon rows of letters, until you got it right. your grandmother used to make the outlines of the letters using a very light-colored pencil, so that you wouldn't have to measure too much. at the end of the year you were awarded the 'best in penmanship' star, the red one. you grew up being known to be one of the best spelling-and-grammar rules followers in class. you know what doesn't belong in a sentence. you know when an 'h' is silent.
capitalization is serious business. all german nouns are capitalized. on government forms, you use block letters. you are quite good at doing big letters, except for one: your capital j looks like an s, so you always put a small serif at the top.
the literary people, you find out, are really the ones who break the rules. remember the numerous small i's and the not-capitalizing-at-the-beginning-of-sentences thing? they must be really great, you think, to be exempted from the rule. they are even praised and labelled geniuses for thinking of such a witty way to write 'i have something to say, but i am really insignificant' with that small i. postmodern, they say, postmodern.
capitalization is serious business. small letters are cute, fun, mellow, and easy on the eyes.
it's such a cool, unpretentious, humble way to write, you learn. the word processor automatically capitalizes all i's, and it annoys you. you go back and write it properly: "i". i, i, i. i am small. i is small. i am insignificant, but i have something to say.
a lesson in big & small
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