alpha and omega

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Sep 21 12:13:05 EDT 2002


At 11:36 AM -0400 9/21/02, Bart Ehrman wrote:
>   When writing out the names of the Greek letters, is there a reason to
>capitalize them?  I'm thinking of the passage in the Infancy Gospel of
>Thomas where a teacher is instructing Jesus in the alphabet, from alpha to
>omega (or Alpha to Omega).

Well, I think I'd use a lower-case character for Omicron and an upper-case
character for Omega.

More seriously, I'd think that if, as in normal editorial usage for
classical Greek texts, lower-case letters are standard except to begin
proper names, it would be appropriate to use upper-case characters for the
letter-names. That's the way I've seen it in texts of Euclid where the
angles and sides, etc., are spelled out with upper-case Greek letters.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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