re From Typology to Type

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 18, 2002 1:08 AM
Subject: Re: re From Typology to Type

> on 18/5/02 2:34 AM, Doug Millison at millison at online-journalist.com wrote:
>
> > Thanks for passing that article along, Dave. Pynchon's typographical
play
> > in M&D could be seen as a conscious response to Sterne's,-- the dash,
yes,
> > and also the Capitalization of Certain Words.  The question has come up
> > often, here in Pynchon-L, if the capitalized words follow any meaningful
> > pattern.
>
> Generally speaking, it's the nouns (and certain adjective-noun
> collocations)
> which are capitalised in _M&D_, in a similar manner to the capitalisation
> of nouns in German, >snip>
>

Which makes the Text indeed more readable to German Speakers. You must admit
that capitalizing Nouns makes some Sense.

>
> He's definitely made concessions to his 20th-21st C. audience:
> the text isn't difficult to read at all.
>
> best
>

So the main Study on M&D should be done by an Expert on 18th-style English.
Is it known when (and maybe why) the English Language dropped the Habit of
capitalizing Nouns?

Otto