shape of characters

In printing, uppercase characters, small capitals and lowercase characters can be straight (roman) or slanted (italic).

italic

Type style with characters slanting to the right; it is used mostly to identify titles, quotations and foreign words.

lowercase

Smaller version of a letter that is generally used for most text wherever a capital letter is not required.

small capital

Capital letter that is the same height as a lowercase letter and is used mainly to write symbols.

uppercase

Capital letter used mostly at the beginning of a sentence and for proper names.