Adding to eburacum45
Think of lower-case letters as being the missing link between capitals and shorthand.
Back in the early Christian period (way WAY before the days of printing) every letter was drawn by hand. People were searching for ways to write faster. The church developed a system of writing referred to as “Unical.” These are basically capital letters, except the letterforms are freely-drawn rounded forms, the curved nature of the letters reduced the number of strokes required to make most letters as well as reduced the number of angular joints, which had a tendency to clog up with ink.
The Unical was followed by the “Half-unical.” This new development had acenders and decenders, which helped to differentiate the shape of the letters and allows for faster reading. The half-unical gave way to “Caroline Miniscules” around the ninth century.
These were considered a completely different type of letterform than the classic capitals and using upper and lower case type together wouldn’t come into practice until the time of Charlemagne. If that seems amazing, consider that they had only gotten the bright idea of using spaces between words instead of runningthemalltogether a few hundred years prior to that.
[Content above paraphrased or downright copied from: History of Graphic Design by Phillip Meggs]
Let’s see if I can articulate how the letters you mentioned got constructed:
A: There are two types of lower-case “a”. One of them looks like an upside down lower-case “e.” That’s the one we’re talking about. Start by drawing the angled right stroke of the capital A. Now instead of doing a second angle for the left side and and additional line for the crossbar, draw both strokes at once by starting near the top - pull down to the left, once you near the baseline, curve back up and to the right to approximate an angled cross-bar. Bastardize that over the course of a few centuries and there you have it.
G: You know how you have to do two strokes to make a “G?” You do the “C” part first, then you go back to add that little, rotated “L” on the right side? Do that all in one stroke. Curve the end of your “C” up and to the left a little, and then to distinguish it from a “curvy C” double back to the right and down to pronounce that vertical line on the right. After a while that last vertical stroke down became longer (past the baseline) and curved to left to distinguish it from the “q” which eventually came along.
L: Well, just draw one less stroke. Looks a lot like a capital “i” doesn’t it. Actually some (relatively) newer sans-serif designs like DIN Schriften acknowlege this and are reintroducing a little curved hook to the bottom to distinguish it from the capital “i”.
How much of a typography geek am I?
