A small letter is an individual piece of metal type bearing a lowercase character. In traditional hand typesetting, these frequently used characters were kept in the lower, more accessible half of the divided typecase, directly in front of the compositor. The physical separation from the capital letters in the upper case gave rise to the familiar terms lowercase and uppercase.
You're out of small letters for the letter e in that font, so you'll have to distribute some old galleys first.
Also heard as
- lowercase
Related terms
Typecase
A shallow wooden tray with compartmentalized boxes for holding individual pieces of metal type.
Distribute
To break down a form of handset metal type and return each letter to its correct compartment.
Galley
A shallow, three-sided metal tray used to hold lines of set type before they are made up into pages.