Minuscule
A lowercase letter. One of the various writing styles in the Middle Ages
(Carolingian Minuscule, blackletter minuscule) which was derived from the
New Roman cursive alphabet that in turn was used for quick and informal
every day writing. In contrast to officially used Roman square capitals that
we can still see on ancient buildings, New Roman cursive uses small letters
and ligatures thus forming a fluid handwriting. Cursive actually comes from
the Latin word cursivus which means „flowing“.
Microtypography
This part of typography, also referred to as detail typography, deals with the
subtleties of typesetting, which have a significant impact on readability and
legibility of a given text:
- choice of fonts, font foundries or web font services
- fine tuning of the font size for body copy and headlines
- fine tuning of tracking/letter spacing/kerning
- fine tuning of leading and line widths
- special characters, small caps and ligatures
- correct application of punctuation marks
Majuscule
Modern uppercase letters of the Western writing system developed from
the Roman uncial script. In most of the ancient writing systems there where