keep down

In letterpress and hand composition, to keep down meant to set type using capital letters sparingly, relying instead on lowercase letters even where modern style might call for caps. A compositor working to keep down would render proper nouns, titles, and sentence openings in small capitals or regular lowercase, conserving the precious metal type sorts that were cast in limited quantities, especially the larger point sizes.

The practice emerged from genuine material constraint. Capitals took up more metal and required more sorting and storage space in the type case. A job that kept down capitals stretched the available sorts further and reduced the compositor's time spent hunting through crowded upper compartments of the case. For lengthy works or tight budgets, the instruction to keep down was economically sound.

Printers distinguished between different degrees of restraint. A compositor might keep down all caps except proper names, or might keep down everything but the opening of a paragraph. Some clients' house styles demanded aggressive keeping down; others allowed freer use. The choice often depended on the typeface available, the print run length, and the client's budget. Small foundries with limited sorts had no choice but to keep down.

The term belongs entirely to the era before photosetting and offset lithography. Once film and photographic composition became standard in the mid-20th century, the physical scarcity of metal sorts vanished, and the instruction became pointless. Modern style guides evolved independently, favoring lowercase in many contexts for readability rather than resource management, but the old constraint-driven practice had already fallen away.