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Graphic Design

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  • See John Crossley’s “Old-fashioned versus newfangled: Reading and writing numbers, 1200–1500” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, Third Series, Volume 10 (2013). Commented Oct 6, 2018 at 18:24
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    It turns out that “number case” is a ᴛᴇʀᴍ ᴏꜰ ᴀʀᴛ in TrueType/OpenType fonts, the very one suggested by Vincent’s answer above. Quoting from Adobe’s TrueType Reference Manual: “Number Case is independent of Letter Case. Lower Case Numbers (also called "traditional" or "old style") are digits which may descend below the baseline, as opposed to Upper Case Numbers (also called "lining"), which do not descend below the baseline.” Commented Oct 27, 2018 at 17:49
  • "For example, when filling in a form, it is common to see “Please write in block letters only” or something to that effect, to make sure that what you write is clear and legible and cannot be mistaken for something else." Which is ironic, given that all-caps is actually less legible and harder to read than sentence-case text (due to the lack of ascenders and descenders to help the eye along). Commented Dec 28, 2021 at 4:50
  • @Vikki In typed text, yes. I was talking about handwritten text here, where the benefits of a- and descenders in sentence case are vastly outweighed by the text being joined up, written at higher speed and with more idiosyncrasy, making block letters far more legible in most cases. Commented Dec 28, 2021 at 8:21
  • @JanusBahsJacquet: That would've been accurate up to about fifty years ago, but nowadays hardly anyone uses joined-up handwriting except in signatures (which don't need to be legible, just distinct). Commented Dec 28, 2021 at 8:29