[HN Gopher] Explore a new digital edition of "Printing Types" fr...
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       Explore a new digital edition of "Printing Types" from 1922
        
       Author : bryanrasmussen
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2025-09-27 19:42 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
        
       | rob74 wrote:
       | TIL that "uppercase" and "lowercase" come from the actual _cases_
       | where the types were stored. When I saw this picture
       | https://cdn8.openculture.com/2025/09/23222831/OC-Printing-Ty...
       | from the article, it all became clear. Even the numbers (for
       | which you don't have to press "shift" on the keyboard either)
       | were also stored in the lower case (which was obviously for the
       | most often used types). Which then translated nicely to the
       | typewriter: no shift for the more commonly used characters
       | (lowercase), shift for the less common (uppercase).
       | 
       | Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Terminology
        
         | dreamcompiler wrote:
         | Yes. However in the US at least, the California job case was
         | much more popular in the 20th century and it moved the capitals
         | to the right of the "lower case" letters rather than above
         | them. Nevertheless during the years when I was a typesetter we
         | still called them "upper case" and never "right case".
         | 
         | If you buy an old typecase at an antiques store in the US, 99%
         | of the time it will be a California job case.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_job_case
        
       | somat wrote:
       | I was looking into early letter forms and found this delightful
       | book on sign-painting from 1878.
       | 
       | https://ia600606.us.archive.org/32/items/artofletteringsi00b...
       | 
       | One thing I found interesting is the terminology around types
       | were not serif and san-serif but roman style and egyptian style.
       | roman is still sort of used this way but I had never heard the
       | term egyptian to refer to san serif letter forms. I wonder when
       | we lost it.
        
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       (page generated 2025-09-30 23:01 UTC)