page_title: Letter case
section_title: Bicameral script
hierarchical_section_title: Letter case / Bicameral script
caption_attribution_description: English: Scan from Adyg primary (1927)
context_page_description: Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger upper case and smaller lower case in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that distinguish between the upper and lower case have two parallel sets of letters, with each letter in one set usually having an equivalent in the other set. The two case variants are alternative representations of the same letter: they have the same name and pronunciation and are treated identically when sorting in alphabetical order.
  Letter case is generally applied in a mixed-case fashion, with both upper- and lower-case letters appearing in a given piece of text for legibility. The choice of case is often prescribed by the grammar of a language or by the conventions of a particular discipline. In orthography, the upper case is primarily reserved for special purposes, such as the first letter of a sentence or of a proper noun, which makes the lower case the more common variant in regular text.
  In some contexts, it is conventional to use one case only.
context_section_description: Writing systems using two separate cases are bicameral scripts. Languages that use the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Coptic, Armenian, Adlam, Warang Citi, Cherokee, and Osage scripts use letter cases in their written form as an aid to clarity and legibility. Another bicameral script, which is not used for any modern languages, is Deseret. The Georgian alphabet has several variants, and there were attempts to use them as different cases, but the modern written Georgian language does not distinguish case.
  Many other writing systems make no distinction between majuscules and minuscules –  a system called unicameral script or unicase. This includes most syllabic and other non-alphabetic scripts.
  In scripts with a case distinction, lower case is generally used for the majority of text; capitals are used for capitalisation and emphasis when bold is not available. Acronyms (and particularly initialisms) are often written in all-caps, depending on various factors.
caption: Adyghe Latin alphabet, used between 1927 and 1938, was based on Latin script, but did not have capital letters, being unicameral
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