Die historische Entwicklung der Grossschreibung im Deutschen

Research paper from 2001 in the field of German Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1, University of Bielefeld, course: Seminar: Exploring Spelling, language: German.

Abstract: Since the Danish spelling reform of 1948 and the associated introduction of moderate lowercase writing in Danish, German is now the only language that features capital letters to such a large extent in its written form. Unlike other languages, in German not only sentence beginnings, proper names, and expressions of respect and politeness are capitalized, but also all words that can be understood as nouns, including nominalizations of other parts of speech. This is likely one reason why the rules governing capitalization and lowercase writing are among the most problematic areas of German orthography.