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@xxxxxxxxx> 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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