diff --git a/tests/test_coverage.py b/tests/test_coverage.py
index 4dccf48..0ee5c26 100644
--- a/tests/test_coverage.py
+++ b/tests/test_coverage.py
@@ -102,3 +102,9 @@ def test_words():
     assert len(WORDS) > 0
     assert WORDS[0] == 'aa'
     assert WORDS[-1] == 'zzz'
+
+def test_keep_case():
+    assert segment('\tMaintainCasing \nwith   variableSpaCING', True) \
+            == ['Maintain', 'Casing', 'with', 'variable', 'SpaCING']
+    assert segment('\tMaintainCasing \nwith   variableSpaCING', False) \
+            == ['maintain', 'casing', 'with', 'variable', 'spacing']
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/wordsegment/__init__.py b/wordsegment/__init__.py
index 1db0776..e1c99f0 100644
--- a/wordsegment/__init__.py
+++ b/wordsegment/__init__.py
@@ -30,6 +30,7 @@
 import math
 import os.path as op
 import sys
+import re
 
 
 class Segmenter(object):
@@ -162,11 +163,26 @@ def candidates():
             yield word
 
 
-    def segment(self, text):
+    def segment(self, text, keep_case=False):
         "Return list of words that is the best segmenation of `text`."
+        if keep_case:
+            return self.maintain_case(text, list(self.isegment(text)))
         return list(self.isegment(text))
 
-
+    def maintain_case(self, orig_text, seg_text):
+        "maintain the characters casing by referring back to `orig_text`."
+        cased_text = []
+        og_char_i = 0
+        for tok_i in range(len(seg_text)):
+            cased_token = list(seg_text[tok_i])
+            for char_i in range(len(cased_token)):
+                while re.match('[\s]',orig_text[og_char_i]):
+                    og_char_i += 1
+                cased_token[char_i] = orig_text[og_char_i]
+                og_char_i += 1
+            cased_text.append(''.join(cased_token))
+        return cased_text
+        
     def divide(self, text):
         "Yield `(prefix, suffix)` pairs from `text`."
         for pos in range(1, min(len(text), self.limit) + 1):
@@ -207,12 +223,14 @@ def main(arguments=()):
                         default=sys.stdin)
     parser.add_argument('outfile', nargs='?', type=argparse.FileType('w'),
                         default=sys.stdout)
+    parser.add_argument('--keep_case', action='store_true', default=False,
+                        help='maintain original case of input text')
 
     streams = parser.parse_args(arguments)
     load()
 
     for line in iter(streams.infile.readline, ''):
-        streams.outfile.write(' '.join(segment(line.strip())))
+        streams.outfile.write(' '.join(segment(line.strip(), streams.keep_case)))
         streams.outfile.write(os.linesep)