birdeen's call
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- Jul 15, 2010
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I'm not sure if it's a right place to ask this question. If it isn't please move it.
I was wondering what could be the reason for making the word "I" bigger. I couldn't find any sensible answer so I looked it up, and the only thing I found was this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03wwln-guestsafire-t.html
Their explanation is as follows:
It doesn't convince me. It could be right, but it seems to simply be a guess. Do we know that for sure?
I was wondering what could be the reason for making the word "I" bigger. I couldn't find any sensible answer so I looked it up, and the only thing I found was this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03wwln-guestsafire-t.html
Their explanation is as follows:
“Graphically, single letters are a problem,” says Charles Bigelow, a type historian and a designer of the Lucida and Wingdings font families. “They look like they broke off from a word or got lost or had some other accident.” When “I” shrunk to a single letter, Bigelow explains, “one little letter had to represent an important word, but it was too wimpy, graphically speaking, to carry the semantic burden, so the scribes made it bigger, which means taller, which means equivalent to a capital.”
It doesn't convince me. It could be right, but it seems to simply be a guess. Do we know that for sure?