The 'i' campaign is my (currently) single-handed effort to make the English language both more consistent and less individualistic and egocentric.  It centres around the word 'i', the first person singular nominative pronoun.

The Problem with 'I'

The problem with 'I' is that it is inconsistent with the usage of other English pronouns.  I'm not sure when or how the practice originated, but it is usually capitalized, even when it is not at the beginning of a sentence, despite the fact that it is not a proper noun.

Following is a table of personal pronouns.  Which one looks out of place?
 

Case/Person	First		Second		Third
Number	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative (subject)	I	we	you	you	he, she, it	they
Objective (accusative)	me	us	you	you	him, her, it	them
Possessive (genitive)	my	our	your	your	his, her, its	their
Possessive complement	mine	ours	yours	yours	his, hers, its	theirs

A few notes about the above table:

1. These are not all the English pronouns.  There are also relatives ('who', 'which'), reflexives ('myself'), reciprocals ('one another'), and various others.  (A link to a good English grammar site should go here.  If you've got one, let me know.)  None of them is capitalised like 'I'.
2. This table also highlights two other (arguably more important) problems with English pronouns:
1. The singular and plural forms of the second person are identical, and thus ambiguous.  In early modern English, the forms 'thee', 'thou', 'ye', and 'you' were used for the nominative and objective of the singular and plural, but the first three have long since fallen out of use (unless you regularly read an older translation of the Bible).
2. There is no third person singular common pronoun ('it' is neuter, not common, and people don't generally like being called 'it's).  This is the cause of some consternation to various sectors of the community, including feminists and foreign language translators.  Historically, the masculine form was used in its place, but this has become increasingly unacceptable in modern usage.  Nowadays, people sometimes use the plural form, but this has the dual disadvantage of duplicating the error of the second person (no unique plural form), and usually being incorrect (i.e. noun and verb tenses in a sentence do not match).
I have no campaign for either of these problems (although arguably i should), basically because they are too hard.  Both problems can only be satisfactorily solved by the introduction of new words, and choosing them is a problem:
1. For the first problem, Jeff Fenech's 'I love yous all', and the Southern American 'y'all' are pretty good, but neither is without problems: 'yous' sounds the same as 'use' and 'ewes', and many Southerners use 'y'all' as a singular as well.
2. For the second, i have found a proposal for a new word to fill this gap.  Dr. Lippart's proposal is practical and fair, and i would like to see it adopted in common usage.
3. I'm not sure whether there is a separate designation for the complementary form of the possessive.  This is the form used when the possessive is used as the entire predicate of the sentence (and perhaps under other circumstances as well?).  Examples: 'That seat is hers', 'Yours is the glory, O Lord'.  Please let me know if you have the answer to this.

Now some comments on the capitalization of 'i':

• The objective and possessive cases of the first person singular are not capitalized.
• No forms of the second or third person are capitalized.
• German, and possibly other Germanic and other Western European languages do not capitalize their equivalent of 'i'.

Enough Grammar!

In my opinion, consistency with the other pronouns is a good enough reason not to capitalize 'i'.  However, there is another reason which i think weighs heavily on this subject, and that is the fact that our society is very egocentric.  Many people are concerned only with "looking out for number one" - themselves.

It's only a small thing, but putting a small 'i' in places where i used to put a capital one makes me think a bit more about putting others first.  Here is a scripture passage which i think sums it up.  It speaks of three persons who thought of others before themselves: Timothy, Epaphroditus, and Jesus Christ.  I also highly recommend the short article Is Self-Love Biblical?, by Daniel Wallace on this subject.

But it looks stupid!

Yes, it does - at first.  However, after a while, you get used to it, and after a little while longer, you start to wonder why everyone else is capitalizing incorrectly!  :-)  Try it for a while!  People who natively speak German or a similar sensible language should find it no trouble at all.

What to do?

So here is my request: treat the first person singular nominative pronoun just like any other pronoun.  If it is at the beginning of the sentence, capitalize it as per normal use, otherwise leave it in its rightful case.

Join me in my campaign!  Use 'i' in all your documents and personal correspondence.  Link to this page if you want, or better, write your own.

And most importantly, try to put others first.