Upper and lower case

In the days when printers prepared a page of print by picking out letters of metal type one by one and inserting them into a form, they kept these letters in different compartments in boxes which could be closed and transported. These boxes were called cases. When they were in use, they were kept on two levels.The printer would stand one case higher than the other.

The capital or majuscule letters (A, B, C… X, Y, Z etc) were kept in the upper case, while the ordinary, ‘small’ or minuscule letters (a, b, c… x, y, z) were kept in the lower case.

That is why these are the terms used in technical descriptions of printing and other uses of the written language, for example in Microsoft Word and other computer programs. The terms upper and lower case are now the standard way to name these different sizes of letter.