Uncial letters were developed in Rome in the 4th century and widely used throughout Western Europe, including England and Ireland. From the 10th century Uncial was used on solemn occasions as a script first in combination with Carolingian minuscule, later with different kinds of Gothic hands. Decorative forms of Uncials used as uppercase for headings and initials in medieval scripts and prints were called Lombardic capitals as they arose in Italy (Lombardia) in the 11th century. Uppercase characters have wide proportions, some vertical strokes are curved and arched. Recent uncials are distinguished by strong contrast, thin tapered serifs and multiple calligraphic tails and flourishes.
An international standard for character mappings, based on an extended (mostly 16-bit) index. Unicode is supported in TrueType and OpenType font formats.
Depending on alignment, this term refers to text which is set flush left, flush right, or centered.
Upper and lowercase: the normal form for setting text in the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets.
Capital letters such as A, B, C, etc. Derived from the practice of placing these letters in the top (upper) case of a pair of typecases by printers when laying out text.
Early style of Cyrillic scripts known since the 9th century. It’s a large-size, slow formal majuscule type. It’s characterized by nearly square proportions, strong contrast, vertical stems with small serifs, long ascenders and descenders. Upright letters are quite wide, round letters are narrow, pointed, double-angled. Lowercase characters are absent. Later forms of Ustav (14th–15th centuries) have more angular shapes, more even widths of characters, smaller size. Abbreviations, ligatures and diacritics are in use.