England is where the capital “I” first reared its dotless head. In Old and Middle English, when “I” was still “ic,” “ich” or some variation thereof — before phonetic changes in the spoken language led to a stripped-down written form — the first-person pronoun was not majuscule in most cases. The generally accepted linguistic explanation for the capital “I” is that it could not stand alone, uncapitalized, as a single letter, which allows for the possibility that early manuscripts and typography played a major role in shaping the national character of English-speaking countries. “Graphically, single letters are a problem,” says Charles Bigelow, a type historian and a designer of the Lucida and Wingdings font families. “They look like they broke off from a word or got lost or had some other accident.” When “I” shrunk to a single letter, Bigelow explains, “one little letter had to represent an important word, but it was too wimpy, graphically speaking, to carry the semantic burden, so the scribes made it bigger, which means taller, which means equivalent to a capital.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03wwln-guestsafire-t.html

This is not a proper English phrase, but the term is used in slang when referring to poker players, who cannot hide whether he is holding great cards, or terrible cards. For example, if everytime a player gets great cards...he starts to blink a lot with his eyes, or he starts clearing his throat....the slang word for this is 'Tells" An opponent could say to him: "You got so many tells!" and this would be perfectly understood by all that are sitting at the card table. Other than slang, it has no meaning.

HI. When you use the 'rather than' , it is ALWAYS used to substitute one thing for another. It can refer to any person, place, or thing....but it will always be used to select one thing over another. For example: 1. I prefer to walk to school, rather than ride the bus. (in this case, you are preferring one action...over another.) 2. I eat my breakfast after I shower in the morning, rather than eating when I first wake up. 3. I prefer to eat sushi, rather than fish that is cooked. I hope this helped. The possibilities are endless, but it is just used to show a preference of one thing over another.