They will be referred to here by that under which they are known to modern printers, "lower-case." A further modification of the letter came with the introduction of the sloping, or italic letter.

This received its name from its place of origin, Italy.

It was introduced by Nicholas Jenson, a printer of Venice, and was an imitation of the handwriting of the Italian poet Petrarch.

Originally it was used only for the lower-case and was combined with the older form of capital letters, called roman, also from the place of its origin.

Later the italic characteristics were given to capitals as well as lower-case letters.
An ordinary font of book type contains five series of letters: full capitals, small capitals, italic capitals (full size), roman lower-case, and italic lower-case.