Design Nomenclature / Type

Unicameral

Also called single case, caseless, unicase

This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.

A script with one case — Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Han, Hangul, Georgian mkhedruli. Most of the world's scripts are. Everything Latin typography does with case must be done another way: emphasis in Arabic can't be small caps, and text-transform: uppercase is a no-op or, worse, wrong.

A two-column comparison headed "Whether the script has a second case at all". The left column is titled Unicameral and reads: one case — Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Han, Hangul, most of the world's scripts; text-transform: uppercase does nothing. The right is titled Bicameral and reads: two paired cases — Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian; case carries meaning, so casing is a typographic decision.

In practice

Also used for Latin display faces that mix cap and lowercase forms into one alphabet — Bayer's universal, and most crypto logotypes since. Different sense, same word.

Not to be confused with

How this term connects

BicameralCJKDevanagariRight-to-leftSmall capsUnicameral
Related Confused with