The name upper case/ lower case come from the early days of metal type. The capital letters were kept on the upper shelf of a work station; the lower case letters, the lower shelf

Gutenberg’s moveable type machines tried to mimic the handwriting of scribes that readers were accustomed to. There were even standard irregularities with each letter to suggest human authenticity

Some typographers suggest we read based on the negative space around words, which do take up more space, than by looking at the strokes themselves

As far as awkward page layouts go, “widow” refers to a line at the top that’s all by itself. ‘Orphan’ refers to a line at that bottom of the page that’s isolated

The space ‘trapped’ inside of a letter is its counter space

Thanks Coursera/ CalArts for the info and awesome course!