minuscolo

Minuscolo, in typography, refers to the set of letters used in their smaller form, as opposed to maiuscolo (uppercase). In Italian, the term corresponds to lowercase letters in the Latin alphabet. The concept is central to most scripts derived from the Latin alphabet; many languages distinguish between lowercase and uppercase forms. Lowercase letters are typically used for the main body text, while uppercase is often reserved for sentence-initial letters, proper nouns, acronyms, and emphasis.

The term derives from Latin minusculus, meaning somewhat smaller, and the Italian noun minuscolo is formed from that root. The development of minuscolo is closely linked to the history of writing. The Carolingian minuscule, standardized in the 8th–9th centuries, produced a clear, rounded lowercase set that improved readability and copying accuracy. This form influenced the later design of European typography and the predominance of lowercase in printed and hand-written text.

In modern usage, capitalization rules vary by language. Most languages using the Latin script employ lowercase as the default for general text, with uppercase used for sentence starts, proper nouns, and many stylistic or technical conventions. Some languages apply title case or other capitalization schemes that interact with diacritic and orthographic rules.

In computing, case distinctions are significant. Lowercase and uppercase letters occupy different code points in encodings such as Unicode and ASCII. Case folding and case-sensitive comparisons are common operations in search, sorting, and programming. Diacritics and ligatures add further considerations for accurate lowercasing across languages.