Did the Romans use lower-case letters?

Question

Did the Romans use the same lower-case letters as we do? In other words, would they have been able to read latin texts of today? If not, when and where were our lower-case letters invented?

Answer 1

The Romans only had "majuscule" (what we would call "upper-case") letter forms and didn't have "minuscule" ("lower-case") letters.

What we know as lower-case letters come from the uncial script developed by the Irish as an easier way to write. I think they were developed sometime around the 3d century AD.

Answer 2

Good question, it is one of my interests as a typesetter/programmer/artist. Check the link below. You see, in a print shop when we used the old lead type, the "J" and the "U" were after the "Z" in the little cubby-holes that held the molds to make up headline type.

As a side note: in German, we say -- "Fau-Vee" for VW. As W came after the mother tongue of Latin, the "J", "W" were added after German differentiated from Latin.

The Bible was Greek and was soon translated into Latin. No "J" and that's pretty interesting.

I have seen much Roman artifacts and never consciously registered in my mind there were no lower-case.

Answer 3

Great question. In addition to only using "majiscules" the Romans did not use punctuation like we do today. That is why Latin "case" (nominative, vocative, etc.) and relative word position in the sentence are so important; much to the chagrin of students today.

Technically the word "upper" and "lower" case only came about with the advent of print in the mid-1400s. In the typesetter's box, majiscules were kept in the "upper" case and miniscules were kept in the "lower" case.

Answer 4

Well the romans printed thier language as Latin.They capitalised the l.so presumably the used this form writing

Answer 5

No they didnt
The cezer (KING) made up the rules and writing of the empire(Rome and surrounding countrys) and they had there own writing .
some letters similar to greek