Wow

It seems I was not the only one confused: a search for 'uncial' turned up a lot of interesting responses. As did one for 'capital I'.

What 'uncial' represents, even in the true script hand of various ancient languages, appears to be a crap shoot. Usually a mix of what we customarily consider capital and minuscule letters, 'uncial' may not be the term I need.

Upper case, lower case ... middle case? 'Case', in case (!) you were confused, is a typesetter's term from the days of manual letterpress (that's setting all the letters by hand, rubbing ink on them and pressing them against a piece of paper or a card). Once upon a time, 'moveable' type was just that, moving from press to press in a giant rack that held 'cases' of letters.

I recall seeing, but never using, an old letterpress in this retail store where I worked as a teen. It fascinated me. It was used in the store to print cards (I think 10" by 20") to advertise certain 'specials' offered from time to time that were to be displayed point-of-purchase (yeah, 'purchase' and 'pay for' are different. Another post.).

And this old letterpress had three sets (or 'cases') of its one and only alphabet (or 'font'). It was kept around because the guy who printed up the signs with the newer letterpress (that had only two sets of alphabets) occasionally needed an extra letter or two from the old one. Made of soft metal, many letters had been worn down by use over time and, frankly, this old deal was way too heavy to move -- so there it sat, collecting dust.

Something this guy pointed out to me one day was the difference in the 'i' letters for the old one, the difference being the one I described in the last post.

As I searched various Google fonts since I last posted, it seems this 'third' distinction is not even in the specs for digital fonts. It also seems that few, if any, digital san serif fonts exist with the proper form of capital 'I' -- the lineal 'caps' on that and the capital 'J' not being serifs, but actually parts of that size letter, just as the dot in the lower case or minuscule versions of those letters is not decorative, but essential.

In the offhand (I know, ouch) type (yeah) of script hand I'd used for 20 years or more, I did not bother dotting a single 'i'. But now -- using the more formally recognized script hand with dotted 'i' and 'j' -- the re-copied results look clearer. Poems just snap into focus (or further out, depending on how well they were written). Odd.

It seems my offhand hand was not so much "off", as merely my own kind of misapplied uncial. Hmmmm.

We are at the beginning of a revolution in typesetting. Isn't it high time we drop the old typewriter "two-case" alphabets and start doing it right, before the situation gets any more 'wrong'?

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By the way, 'wow' is probably close to how the Greeks once pronounced a letter their alphabet actually lost -- the digamma.

It happens.