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ORTHOTIC: A class of Greek scripts and types that flourished in Western Europe between 1200 and 1500, revived in the early twentieth century. Orthotic Greeks are noncursive and usually bicameral. In other words, they are analogous to the roman form of Latin script. Both caps and lower case are usually upright. Serifs, when present, are usually short, abrudt and unilateral. The geometric figures of circle, line and triangle are usually prominent in their underlying structure. Victor Scholdere’s New Hellenic is an example.
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and capitol I make up the two basic forms of all letters in
our modern alphabet. O is unique also in that its forms are basically the same
between upper and lower-case letters. The letter descended from the the Semitic “ayin” which meant the
word “eye” in Phoenician. The Greeks adapted O from the Phoenicians and
used it as the vowel “omnicron” in their early alphabet. In later Greek a break occured
between the two Greek variant alphabets — the Chalcidean (west) and Ionion (east).
Chalcidian became the basis of the Roman alphabet, wheras the eastern,
or Ionion, became classic Greek. The Ionian alphabet replaced the O for omega, placing it at the
end of their alphabet.