HOW SCRIBES CAME TO PUT CAPITAL LETTERS AT THE BEGINNING OF SENTENCES.

HOW SCRIBES CAME TO PUT CAPITAL LETTERS AT THE BEGINNING OF SENTENCES. In the same TLS—September 20—as the discussion of the pound sign, Alexander Murray has a review of an exhibit in Durham of the Lindisfarne Gospels which offers explanations of how the problems facing Irish scribes shaped the way our printed pages look today. The Lindisfarne Gospels were written around 700 in the monastery of Lindisfarne off the Northumbrian coast. Murray says that the Irish monks who wrote it pioneered the use of spaces between words. They also developed starting a sentence with a larger letter and starting sections with a very large illuminated letter. Murray thinks they adopted these conventions, which made for easier reading, because Latin was a second language. People take shortcuts (such as abbreviations in text messaging) in languages they know well. In languages they know less well, clarity is important.