An example of writing in Carolingian miniscule

The people of the Middle Ages were great inventors, and especially innovative at finding adaptations for existing technology to fit their needs. If we can count the wheel as the great invention of antiquity, and the printing press as the great invention of the Renaissance (although, depending on your dating, it could also be the Middle Ages), then lower case letters must surely count as one of the great inventions of the Middle Ages.

Before the Carolingian era, all writing was done in capital letters, as is shown by surviving Greek, Latin, Egyptian, and other documents and carvings in stone and clay tablets. Because in the Middle Ages hides (from which vellum was made) were expensive, some genius at the Carolingian court devised lower case letters as a way to maximize the amount of information that could fit onto a page, and his invention is called Carolingian miniscule.

And where would we be without lower case letters today? Before Carolingian miniscule, documents were brief, because they had to fit onto the available material. They were harder to read, as we have seen plentiful examples of when we try to read something written in all capital letters. And so the invention of Carolingian miniscule has made possible such things as novels, textbooks, the poetry of e.e. cummings, a variety of forms of handwriting, and the wide variety of typesetting and computer fonts; in fact, the usability of the Internet and of all written materials today is the result of the invention of Carolingian miniscule!