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

I'd like to understand the phenomen, why writer's person is so important in English, that i can't write 'I' intentionally lower-cased. I don't like to emphasise myself, writing 'I' makes me more important, i think, i prefer to write 'You' as capitalized.

In German to address formally i could use 'Sie', but myself is still 'ich'. So in Russian 'Вы' and 'я' or in Estonian 'Te' and 'ma' and in other languages i know. AFAIK, formal address in English has still 'You' too, but 'I' is always 'I'.

There is so many people who write their names intentionally lower-cased, but 'i' is still 'I'. When i write to some moderated or edited site, my 'i'-s are still growing all the way up. Why?

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Wanradt Koell
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    Вы in Russian is not capitalized unless you're illiterate, adressing the Bishop of Rome, or beginning a sentence. Три правила про «вы». – RegDwigнt Sep 21 '11 at 00:20
  • Yes, i was wrong, and i'd like to point out, that i am not sure how second person is written in other languages, but i don't know any other language, where first person is capitalized inside of sentence. And thank you for pointing to duplicates! – Wanradt Koell Sep 21 '11 at 00:39
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    BTW--unless you are e e cummings, not capitalizing proper nouns feels to me like you are being self-indulgent or trying to draw attention to yourself. In other words, as a native English writer I get the opposite impression form the one you describe. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Sep 21 '11 at 00:54

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