lágstöfum

lágstöfum is the Icelandic term for lowercase letters—the set of small forms of letters used in ordinary text. It is contrasted with hástöfum, the uppercase forms, which are used for the initial letter of a sentence, for proper nouns, acronyms, and in some stylistic contexts such as titles. In Icelandic typography, the orthographic rule is that capitalization marks only the start of sentences and proper nouns; common nouns and most verbs occur in lágstöfum in running text.

The Icelandic alphabet includes the standard Latin letters plus diacritics and four letters unique to Icelandic: þ, ð, æ and ö. Lowercase and uppercase forms of these letters correspond as usual; for example, þ, ð, æ, ö have uppercase Þ, Ð, Æ, Ö. In digital typography, this case distinction is encoded in Unicode and used in everyday writing, with lowercase forms being the default in body text and uppercase reserved for emphasis, headings, acronyms, and names.

Historically, lowercase letters spread with the Latin script in European writing and became standard for body text during the medieval and early modern periods; in modern Icelandic typography, lágstöfum is the baseline for readability and tone in most publications, with hástöfum reserved for specific typographic functions.