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Is there a noun to describe the state of a word’s capitalization? I can think of " ‘lower-casedness’ or ‘upper-casesness’ ", but is there a more succinct expression?

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    I guess case could have two states: upper and lower. "What is the case of this letter?" ... "Upper case."
    – GEdgar
    Commented Apr 22, 2018 at 17:34
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    How about "wealth"? (And "Upper Caisse" and "Lower Caisse" are the islands of the island nation San Serrife.)
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Apr 22, 2018 at 19:53

3 Answers 3

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"Is there a noun to describe the state of a word’s capitalization?" A word can be, in ordinary text, capitalised: Queen, all lower-case: queen, all upper case (or all capitals/"all caps"): QUEEN. I suppose a noun phrase to describe this might be 'capitalisation state'. I spell 'capitalise' the British way.

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  • Upper or lower. Could you please compose this in a meaningful sentence as part of your answer?
    – Stan
    Commented Apr 22, 2018 at 21:30
  • I would just say capitalized. (Or, not capitalized.) Which is different from "all caps." Commented Apr 23, 2018 at 5:21
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On web pages it is called the CSS text-transform. There are currently

uppercase, lowercase, and capitalize.

Of course that is specific to how web page programmers talk about it.

Source: https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_text_text-transform.asp

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majuscule

as opposed to

minuscule

majuscule
A large letter, either capital or uncial, used in writing or printing.
American Heritage Dictionary

minuscule
3. A lowercase letter.
American Heritage Dictionary

Letter case (or just case) is the distinction between the letters that are in larger upper case (also uppercase, capital letters, capitals, caps, large letters, or more formally majuscule) and smaller lower case (also lowercase, small letters, or more formally minuscule) in the written representation of certain languages
Letter case (Wikipedia)

Edit: If you want the word that describes both upper case and lower case characters, then the word you're looking is "letter case" or just "case". If however you want to say that letters are written in upper-case, you can call them upper case or majuscule.

majuscule can either by noun or adjective:

n (Printing, Lithography & Bookbinding) a large letter, either capital or uncial, used in printing or writing
adj (Printing, Lithography & Bookbinding) relating to, printed, or written in such letters. Compare minuscule Collins English Dictionary

So you can say the word or letters are typed or written in majuscule, or you can simply refer to the letters as majuscule if you want.

These are technical terms, you'd be clearer with "upper case", which can mean what you said "upper-casedness".

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  • I believe that majuscule and minuscule are instances of what was requested. Please refine your answer.
    – Stan
    Commented Apr 22, 2018 at 21:34
  • Perhaps "sculishness".
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Apr 22, 2018 at 21:45

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