Bicameral

Also called dual case, two-case

Type
2D

A script with two cases that pair off — Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian. The two sets come from different histories: Roman capitals from inscriptional letters, lowercase from the Carolingian minuscule, fused into one alphabet only in the Renaissance. Case carries meaning, which is why casing is a typographic decision and not just a style.

Three rows, one per script, each showing letters paired capital beside lowercase. Some pairs are the same shape at two sizes, while others — Latin A and a, Greek alpha, Cyrillic Б and б — are structurally different drawings that stand for the same letter.

Not to be confused with

UnicameralA 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.

Origin

Uppercase and lowercase are literally furniture: the compositor's capitals lived in the upper of two type cases, the minuscules in the lower, within easy reach.

How this term connects

Related Confused with

Not to be confused with

Origin

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How this term connects

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