Why do lowercase letters look different from uppercase ones? | The Hot Word | Hot & Trending Words Daily Blog at Dictionary.com - http://hotword.dictionary.com/randr...
Obviously, though, we don’t still use a lowercase r that looks like that. At this same time, another lowercase r was competing with the r rotunda. Greek letters were often written in what we’d call cursive, with the end of one letter going into the beginning of the next. From 100 to 300 A.D., Latin scribes began writing Latin in a Greek style. It was called New Roman Cursive. The New Roman Cursive version of the r is very similar to the lowercase r with which we are familiar. This r looks like part of the lower staff of the capital R and can be easily distinguished from other letters and – most importantly – written quickly.
- Pariah Burke