Are majuscule and minuscule characters good?

I prefer to read text in sentence case, and get annoyed when people continuously write in lower or upper case. I think majuscule and minuscule are good, but in the right context. I need to research to find out why we write in sentence case and why it is good. Also I would like to find out if other people have a different view to me. Surely the one which would be good in this case would be the case which is most legible to read.

Basics Design:Typography

Here is an example of majuscule and minuscule text in design. Both examples and previous posts MAJUSCULE, minuscule, German nouns and Spacing have been taken from 'Basics Design: Typography' by Ambrose and Harris.

Majuscule text design

Minuscule text design

Spacing

As lower case letters tend to flow into one another it is considered bad typographical practise to letterspace themas this makes the text more difficult to read. Capitals depend less on each other, and so we are therefore more used to viewing and reading them with space in place.

S P A C I N G

s p a c i n g

I can definitely read the majuscule letters easier than the minuscule letters in this case.

German nouns

Certain languages can look uncomfortable when set in Roman. German for example uses initial capital letters at the start of written nouns. This disrupts the scanning motion of the eye.

"I went to the Shop in my Car to buy Food, a Book and a Video."

minuscule

lowercase letters were developed by alcuin in the 8th century, these allowed text to be divided into sentences and paragraphs by beginning the first word of a sentence with a capital letter.

MAJUSCULE

TEXT SET IN MAJUSCULE CHARACTERS REQUIRES THE READER TO CONSTRUCT THE WORDS BY READING EACH INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER, WHICH CAN BE SLOW AND TIRING.

Scan not read

"Blocks of text are considered easier to read when set in Roman, Old Style or Antiqua, which is to say a combination of majuscule (upper case) and minuscule (lower case) characters. This is because the human eye 'scans' the text using ascenders and descenders to recognise words rather than constructively reading each and every word. Majuscules share the same height and have fewer visual shortcuts for the eye than minuscules, which have ascending or descending stems that assist scanning."

Taken from 'Basics Design: Typography' by Ambrose and Harris.

Small cap

"A small cap is far more harmonious with the body text because it has been specifically re-cut to have the same width strokes as those of the regular characters."

Ambrose and Harris from 'Basics Design: Typography'

Case variations

Small caps do not overpower the surrounding text, but make a point of highlighting a section. Lowercase letters are used for cody copy and capitols can be used to emphasis a specific bit of text. With capitols they can appear to be shouted and aggressive.

Example from the Minion typeface family - taken from 'Basics Design: Typography' by Ambrose and Harris. 

Case

Originally two cases were used for storing metal type. The top one for the capital letters and the one below for the small letters. The terms uppercase and lowercase are derived from this. Interesting fact!