Typography trivia; Uppercase, lowercase

[btiffin]

I was playing in Inform 7 today; bumped into this. You may or may not find it interesting. I did.

Quote:

In most European languages the same letters can appear in two forms: as capitals, like "X", mainly used to mark a name or the start of a sentence; or in their ordinary less prominent form, like "x". These forms are called upper and lower case because, historically, typesetters kept lead castings of letters in two wooden cases, one above the other on the workbench. Lower case letters were in the lower box closer to hand, being more often needed.

Cheers

[[Gandalf]]

Heh, pretty interesting. But what were they called before typesetting?

[md]

"Writing"

Actually, Scribing - as it was a scribe who did the copying.

[Clayton]

That's pretty interesting, who would've thought?

[apomb]

Word origins can be so entertaining.