Arguably, lining figures are uppercase numbers and old-style figures are lowercase numbers. Certainly, the former work better in an all-caps setting than the la

Arguably, lining figures are uppercase numbers and old-style figures are lowercase numbers. Certainly, the former work better in an all-caps setting than the latter, and the latter in mixed-case typesetting than the former. I used to set Canadian and British postcodes, which are mixes of letters and numbers using small caps and old-style figures when I printed mailing labels for the magazine I published in the 90s.