Why do we capitalise I?

In the English language, capitalising the letter I when used as a first-person pronoun is grammatically correct. But why?

To lifelong speakers and writers of the English language, capitalising the letter ‘I’ when it is used as a personal pronoun feels right and natural. In fact, many of us get upset when someone doesn’t capitalise it. However, the practice of capitalising the letter ‘I’ is actually rather unusual.

There are, at least, somewhere around 6,500 to 7,000 different languages in the world — and English is the only one of those that capitalises the first-person pronoun.

For example, the French write their personal pronoun, I, as “je”. In German, it’s “ich”. It’s “ego” in Latin, “jag” in Swedish, “yo” in Spanish, “ik” in Dutch and “jeg” in Danish. As you can see, none of these examples are capitalised.

The only other grammatically correct single-letter word in the English language is ‘a’, which we do not capitalise.

The first time I began to realise that no other language capitalises their equivalent of the first-person pronoun was back when I was in high school (a long time ago). My French teacher pointed out that my capitalisations of “Je” in my schoolwork were actually a grammatical error in the written French language. One that made her eyebrow twitch every time she saw it in my class notes (she was born and raised in France). (Désolé Mlle Garcia).

So why is ‘I’ capitalised in the English language?

The correct answer is that we actually don’t have the foggiest idea why. We can only theorise.

Historians and linguists studying the letter ‘I’ are unable to find any definite record or explanation regarding why we capitalise ‘I’ as a personal pronoun. Nor can they agree on a theory why we do so, either. (Yes, there are grown adults with university degrees who study individual letters of the alphabet. Don’t ask why, probably something to do with having too much time on their hands).

Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash

What we do know is that in Old English as well as in the early days of using Middle English, the German word “ich” was used as the personal pronoun. However, likely due to more people gradually learning how to write halfway through the Middle English period, the use of personal pronouns grew and evolved.

Most older English texts were written about other people or other events from a third-person perspective, but as more people gained the ability to write we saw more people writing about themselves (ie, diaries and letters). Not only did the way people write change during this period, but also the phonetic pronunciation of some words in the English language began to change as well, which in some ways was probably influenced by local dialects.

The Germanic word ich can be seen written in surviving Middle English texts as ‘ich’, ‘Ich’, ‘ic’ and ‘Ic’. Eventually, the Germanic “ch” was dropped from the pronunciation of many English words altogether, including the word ich, which evolved (or devolved, whichever way you look at it) into ‘i’ or ‘I’ in later Middle English texts. One famous example of this can be seen in Geoffrey Chaucer’s original Canterbury Tales, where he wrote the personal pronoun ‘I’ much taller and bolder than its lowercase equivalent.

As time grew on, the capitalised I became far more common than its lowercase counterpart when used as a first-person pronoun. Common enough that it became the standard and the grammatically correct way to write it.

But that still doesn’t quite explain why the law of modern English grammar absolutely, definitely, without question requires the pronoun ‘I’ to be capitalised, does it? As already mentioned previously, we don’t actually know why this is the case — but there are theories.

• One possible explanation is that when the Germanic ch was dropped from ich there was a linguistic issue. When ‘I’ is used in text it is usually the subject of the sentence or statement, so the letter ‘I’ may have been capitalised in these instances to promote its importance.
• Another possible explanation is that egotism played a part. Around the time that writing became a more common skill amongst the population, we also saw more people writing about themselves rather than another person. These people may have written the personal pronoun ‘I’ larger and bolder to make themselves come across as more important or to stand out. We see a lot of egotism in Middle English texts compared to modern texts (though we are seeing egotism on the rise again on social media outlets).
• Another theory is because of smudging, smearing and splotching. Unlike today with our fancy ballpoint pens and fast-drying ink, writing back in the days of old was a bit of a messy, wrist-aching nightmare, especially if you were new to the craft of writing. People would dip a nib, which was usually inserted into a large feather, into a pot of wet, slow-drying ink. This caused two problems. Firstly, smudging or smearing caused by the hand or sleeve of the writer or the nib of the writing instrument. Secondly, ink splotches on the paper were common where the wet ink would drip off the nib or cause a large pool of circular ink on the paper when pressed against it for a split second too long, which was a problem when trying to “dot” the page, such as when writing a lowercase “i”.
• Italic writing, which was used for formal events, for example, may, at least in part, be able to help explain why we began to capitalise the first-person pronoun. Italic font is generally cursive. In italic, the lowercase ‘i’ when written in a cursive format appeared weak and didn’t stand out very well. So, in theory anyway, it was capitalised in English texts written in cursive italic to make it stand out more and make it clearer that it was a single word, not a part of the word either side of it. This makes sense when you consider that “i” on the end of a word often indicates a plural, such as “fungi” and “cacti”, so the first-person pronoun could have been written taller (as in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales) to make it clear that it is a separate word, not making the previous word a plural.

So there we have it. I personally find the evolution of language quite interesting. This specific topic has been a particular fascination that has been on my mind for several years as a writer and I hope that you learned something new today from this article.

Recommended related book: A History of the English Language by Professor Michael D.C. Drout (Goodreads link).