I was taught that because it was a single letter representing yourself that it needed to be capitalized so it didn't look like part of another word. That would fit this quote from the article:
The generally accepted linguistic explanation for the capital “I” is that it could not stand alone, uncapitalized, as a single letter, which allows for the possibility that early manuscripts and typography played a major role in shaping the national character of English-speaking countries.
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Modern e-mail culture has shown that many English speakers feel perfectly comfortable dismissing all uses of capitalization — and even correct spelling, for that matter.
I don't. I hate when people don't capitalize. I'm okay with abbreviations, but I hate it when capitals aren't used. It seems kind of lazy to me. But then I guess some folks would say abbreviations like LOL is lazy, too.
A very good friend of mine is an English teacher and she says that eventually there won't be any punctuation whatsoever in the written English language. Sad, isn't it?
- LabRat]
