Before we go any further...

...a glossary is perhaps necessary.

Uncial – written in or pertaining to a form of majuscule writing having no lower case letters and more curves than capitals, used chiefly in the 3rd to 9th century, as you'll no doubt remember.

Majuscule – capital letters

Minuscule – a small cursive script developed in the 7th century from the uncial form

Cursive – flowing strokes resembling handwriting, joined up writing.

Upper case – majuscule letters

Lower case – minuscule letters

Capital letters – in the upper case

Case – a wooden tray with partitions containing type, usually in pairs one set above the other. The upper case contains the capital letters and the lower case contains the small letters and auxiliary type.

Font – a collection of type in one size and style

Typeface – a design of type , including a full range of characters, as letters, numbers and marks of punctuation, in all sizes.

Furniture – see Dead Metal

Dead metal – pieces of wood or metal less than type high which are formed in amongst type to space it out to fit in a chase.

Chase – a rectangular iron frame in which a form of composed type is secured and locked by quoins for printing.

Quoin – a wedge of wood or metal, more recently an adjustable metal wedge, for securing type in a chase.

Bed – to lock up forms and chases in a press prior to printing

Form – an assemblage of type, leads and furniture secured in a chase.

Leading – a thin strip of type metal or brass, less than type height, used to increase space between lines of composed type ready for printing.

Kern – an element of a letter projecting beyond the body of the type, especially with certain italic letters.

Ligature – two characters made as one piece of type, often with kerned pairs: fi ff, not to be confused with diphthong: AE OE

Composing Stick – a portable, adjustable metal tray held by the compositor in one hand as they place in it type gathered from the case by the other hand

Serif – the small horizontal line finishing off the main stroke of a letter. Derived from Roman letters cut in stone where the letter-cutter’s chisel would begin and end the stroke. Believed to be derived from the Dutch schreef stroke.

Sans Serif – letters without serifs

Grotesque - see Sans Serif

Em – a measure, originally the width of a capital M

En – a measure, half the width or an em.

Point – a unit of measure, there are 72 points to an inch.

Point size – originally the distance from the top of the highest ascender to the bottom of the lowest descender in points, now more commonly the height of a capital letter in millimetres.