half uncials or lower case
we know the aesthetics of hanlf-uncials (minuscules) hark back to stroke & surface: quick reed pen ink trace over parchment.
parchment are pieces of papyrus "cut" in oblogn pieces and put together. this act of cutting and piecing together are the proto-books of today (people actually carried a bunch of pieces, since sheets may slip from the bunch the next step was to saw them together in a loose bind).
lower case is a mark of brevity & legibility.
here is the family:
french lower case (merovingian)
iberic lower case (visigothic)
italian lower case (the beneventan in southern italy)
late roman cursive
irish "insular" lowercase
brevity means vernacular, merchant, petit-burgeois (not a bad word yet), secular, science, young.
see how grammar is influenced by aesthetics. capital letters are places in a syntactic paragraph. later, they become codified "marks" for proper noun, proper adjective, first person pronouns and interjections. usage determines differentiation.