Are you a capital sort or inclined to a lower-case view of the world? A recent headline in the Guardian – The death of capital letters: why gen Z loves lowercase – suggests it could be to do with age.

Then again, it might just be fashion. These things come round again, like flared trousers and fascism.

Perhaps it’s also a reaction against the orange-hued unmentionable potty-mouth who rants in capital letters on his social media posts. But let’s proceed without further mention of the man who fancies himself to be an Elvis Costello album title. King of America, in case you’re wondering.

It’s easy to muddle these alphabetical generations, to forget who belongs where. Gen Z embraces people born between 1997 and 2012. On the young side to one who appeared in 1956. That makes me one of those boomers, the generation who snaffled all the opportunity and stole all the money, although someone forgot to tell my bank account about this.

I don’t have anything against lowercase letters as such, or against young people who see cultural merit in purging capitals from what they write.

But where’s the cultural merit in beating up on the older guys?

The other day a committee of MPs warned against the “ageist stereotyping” that slams my generation for stockpiling wealth while younger generations struggle. As it happens, that report also highlighted a worrying degree of digital exclusion among older generations. Thankfully, on that score, I am digitally enabled to complete distraction.

Anyway, upper and lowercase letters. Overuse of lowercase can lead to confusion, as capital letters guide the eye through a sentence like grammatical fingerposts. Then again, too many capitals spoil the view and obscure meaning.

My theory is that the eye skims over lowercase letters, then finds traction with the occasional capital letter. But I’m not going to shout about it or hit the caps key.

Thanks to Simon Garfield’s engaging typographical wander Just My Type (published in 2010) for the following advice in relation to emails: “CAPITAL LETTERS LOOK LIKE YOU HATE SOMEONE AND ARE SHOUTING.”

Same thing on social media. Whereas too many lowercase letters suggests morally superior mumbling.

Thanks to Garfield, too, for the reminder about how we ended up referring to upper and lowercase letters. It’s all to do with old-style printing.

“The term comes from the position of the loose metal or wooden letters laid in front of the traditional compositor’s hands before they were used to form a word – the commonly used ones on an accessible lower level, the capitals above them, waiting their turn.”

That is also where to ‘mind their ps and qs’ originates, as the letters were so alike when dismantled from a block of type that care had to be taken into which compartment of a tray they should be tossed.

Karim Salama, founder of the digital marketing firm e-innovate, told the Guardian that the trend for lowercase letters was a reflection of gen Z’s need for self-expression. Not sure they invented self-expression, but let’s not quibble, or get into inter-generational spats, as we should all agree to just get on.

Salama said: “Using lowercase is straightforward and free from the constraints of past generations.”

We all end up being the past generation sometime or other. Anyway it might also be an understandable reaction against the bellow world, that cruel cacophonous place where he – and it usually is a ‘he’ – who shouts loudest, who bullies and bashes, who belittles and demeans, who lies and libels, comes out on top.

Lovers of lowercase might just be the quiet mutineers of the day, rebels without a capital cause; or perhaps they’re just following the latest linguistic trend.

Either way, another way with words will be along soon enough.