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Why should the first person pronoun 'I' always be capitalized?

I am in a serious doubt here. I just want to know whether to use small or capital letter for denoting 'I' in a phrase. Considering the below example, can anyone help me which of the either one is correct.

Now i want to leave to home.
Now I want to leave to home.

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marked as duplicate by kiamlaluno, Rhodri, FumbleFingers, JSBձոգչ, Thursagen Jul 7 '11 at 22:48

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2 Answers

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One of the capitalization rules is, to capitalize the letter "I" when referring to yourself, so it must be capitalized:

In English, the nominative form of the singular first-person pronoun, "I", is normally capitalized, along with all its contractions (I'll, I'm, etc.).

So, it would be:

2) Now I want to leave for home.

as well as:

I'm leaving for home.

N.B. Only "i" when used as a pronoun is capitalized.

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Thanks. Bcoz I have seen people using small 'i' instead of 'I'. So I just thought that I should clarify it. – Andro Selva Jul 7 '11 at 5:11
Yeah. It's common practise to do that, especially during texting, but its not grammatically correct. – Thursagen Jul 7 '11 at 5:20
3  
@Ham and Bacon: It's not an issue of grammaticality, just one of typographical convention. – Jon Purdy Jul 7 '11 at 5:46
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The pronoun form of I should be capitalized in all cases where it stands alone. However, a word beginning with that letter follows normal capitalization rules.

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Think of I as a proper noun, like someone's name. For this reason, it should be capitalized. – njd Jul 7 '11 at 10:09
@njd By that logic, so should “You”, “He”, “She” and possibly “They”. Why does “I” have this special status (honest question, I have no idea, but it seems very odd and is particular to English). /EDIT: the answer is in the link of @psmears directly below the question. So your reason is wrong. – Konrad Rudolph Jul 7 '11 at 15:55
Meh. It's no more illogical than I is normally capitalized, but fair enough. I can't be bothered arguing. – njd Jul 8 '11 at 9:06

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