A case for lowercase letters.

( this piece is a reflection on the sudden worldwide popularity of punctuating solely with lowercase letters )

Illustration by Mattias Adolfsson

almost as seamlessly as a swift summer breeze, lowercase letters made a case for their sweet softness and danced their way into our lives. it was as if the whole world breathed a sigh at once, realising the aggression of capital letters, a capitalist elitist grammatical repression of bigness over smallness, of definitions over curiosity and even names over souls. 

one day a small someone just decided that the tyranny of large case letters really needed to end. and so they began to write without structure and just let their heart heal through little letters that poured out of them. little letters that made so much sense and were so easily understood. those that read these little letters felt held by the tenderness of how these letters fell on pages, on the screens on their phones, how unassuming these letters were and how kind. they fell in love with the softness of it all, realising the harshness of boxes. they melted into the possibilities of unleashing themselves from the confinements of an alphabet that had already so cruelly colonised the world and had now colonised even the very way they structured their thoughts. 

and so like a forest fire, little letters made their way into many hearts across the world. such an unassuming revolution. such an easy choice. 

if little letters can happen without grand declarations of necessary obedience, how many other little things can ? 

mohini