iad58 | Real small caps (Reply)

Having downloaded and skimmed through a couple of Armenian primers, I noticed a remarkable thing. In Greek, Roman, Cyrillic, Armenian the bodies of lowercase letters fit between the baseline and the x-height line, but many have fairly tall ascenders or deep descenders, whereas uppercase letters fit between the baseline and the cap-height line (which is higher than the x-height line) and seldom descend below the former or ascend above the latter (and then not by much). This is true of both the printed and the handwritten style of the first three alphabets. But in handwritten Armenian many capitals are only as tall as the x-height line! All such have descenders, but so do their lowercase counterparts; the two differ in that the uppercase are more flourished.

Here, for example, both the printed and the handwritten text begin with an uppercase L (Լ) and end with a lowercase l (լ).