Upper and lower case

close-up of type slugs (individual letters used for printing) in wooden storage tray
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We take for granted that typesetting is done by operators at keyboards tapping (typing) out all the text that appears in the books we read. While technology has changed, much of the terminology we use today had its origin long before anyone dreamed there would someday be computers.

Take upper case and lower case, for example, as terms for capital and small letters. When compositors (craftsmen who composed pages of text) set type by hand, they physically picked up each letter with one hand and placed it into a device called a stick, which was held in the other hand. Composition was done upside down and backward because the printed impression appeared in reverse. Upper and lower case refers to boxes of compartmentalized trays, one positioned over the other, that held individual letters typesetters picked from as they set words, punctuation, and spaces into type. Capital letters were located in the upper case of trays; small letters were in the lower case.