Text figures are numerals designed with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the name. They are contrasted with lining figures, which are the same height as upper-case letters. Georgia is an example of a popular typeface that employs text figures by default.
The ascending six and descending nines are minted on this 1996 U.S. penny.
Text figures in various fonts: Adobe Garamond, Adobe Caslon, Theano Didot and Essonnes Text. Note the ascending 3, 4 and 5 in the two latter fonts.
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals and smaller lowercase in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that distinguish between the upper- and lowercase have two parallel sets of letters: each in the majuscule set has a counterpart in the minuscule set. Some counterpart letters have the same shape, and differ only in size, but for others the shapes are different. The two case variants are alternative representations of the same letter: they have the same name and pronunciation and are typically treated identically when sorting in alphabetical order.
Divided upper and lower type cases with cast metal sorts
Layout for type cases
Handwritten Cyrillic script
Papyrus fragment with old Roman cursive script from the reign of Claudius (41–54 CE)