THE ART OF PRINTING
Methods and Tools of Composition.
In printing, composition includes all the steps from receiving the copy until the type is set up, proofed, corrected, and made up into page forms.
This discussion presupposes a knowledge of spelling, syllabication, punctuation, paragraphing, etc., all of which good composition really includes. Practical rules bearing on these different phases may be found in various handbooks for the printer.
The first essential in printing is, of course, a quantity of type properly arranged.
Type is cast from a composition of metals—lead, tin, antimony, and sometimes copper. This composition is melted and poured into moulds the size and shape of the desired type.
Accuracy in Size of Type. Lead is used as the chief constituent of the composition, because it shrinks very little in cooling. This makes greater accuracy possible. Accuracy is an absolute essential in type, for thousands of pieces of metal must be held together in one form by a slight pressure at the sides and ends of the form.
Lead alone is too soft to wear well and to retain the shape of the type under the constant pressure of the printing press. Tin is added to give hardness, and antimony or copper to give toughness to the type metal.
Type Described. Type are small columns of the metal with a letter or character in relief on one end of each column, as at Fig. 1. The surface of this relief portion from which the letter or character is printed is called the face.
The various faces are distinguished by names applied by the foundries, as “Caslon Old Style,” “Engraver’s Old English,” “Banker’s Script,” etc.
The extreme length of type from the face to the foot is .918 inches, or about eleven-twelfths of an inch.
Fig. 1.
The column of metal on which the letter or character rests is the body or shank of the type (a, Fig. 1) and the distance which the body extends beyond the edge of the letter or character is the shoulder (b, Fig. 1).
On the side of the body next the base of the letter or character are one or more nicks (d, Fig. 1). The chief purpose of such nicks is to indicate the base of the letter or character, and thus to aid the compositor in keeping the type right side up without constantly referring to the face of the type.
To the manufacturer, these nicks indicate other things in addition to that mentioned above, but these need not be detailed here.
The size of the type has to do with the body, and signifies the vertical distance through the body, or the distance from the nick side to the opposite side, as from x to x´, Fig. 1.
Of course it is clear that among the large amount of type manufactured, there must be a great number of different faces on the same size of body; and that there may be two or three sizes of the same face on the same size of body.
In order to indicate a specific type, it is necessary to mention its size and the name by which that particular face is distinguished; as, “10 point Author’s Roman Wide,” “18 point Pabst Old Style,” “6 point Caslon Bold Italic,” etc.
The Point System. The type manufacturers of this country have adopted a uniform scale of sizes known as the point system. In this scheme, the unit or point is .0138 inches, or about one seventy-second part of an inch. The size of any type is so many points based upon this system. Twelve points constitute an em pica which is the larger unit of measurement.
When the printer speaks of dimensions, like the length and width of a page, he says it is a certain number of ems or picas long and wide. An em pica is one-sixth of an inch; so a page three inches by five inches is eighteen by thirty ems pica.
Until comparatively recent years there was no definite standard of type sizes. Each foundry established its own standards. If a printer wished to use type from different foundries, it probably was necessary to make some troublesome adjustments with bits of paper or otherwise to get them to line properly. (Specimen of words out of line.)
There was a sufficient similarity in sizes of type to justify the use of names to indicate certain sizes. The names used to designate the common sizes from 4½ to 12 point type according to the point system, are as follows:
| 4½ | points—Diamond |
| 5 | points—Pearl |
| 5½ | points—Agate |
| 6 | points—Nonpareil |
| 7 | points—Minion |
| 8 | points—Brevier |
| 9 | points—Bourgeois |
| 10 | points—Long Primer |
| 11 | points—Small pica |
| 12 | points—Pica |
1. This line is set in 6 point Caslon Bold.
2. This line is set in 8 point Post.
3. This line is set in 10 point Author’s Roman Italic.
4. This line is set in 12 point Strathmore Old Style.
Some of these names, such as Nonpareil, Brevier, Long Primer, and Pica, are still in quite general use.
Not only is the height or depth of the body determined by the point system, but the width or set of the body (cc´ Fig. 1) is also cast on the point basis. There are no fractional points in the width of type made on the point set basis. Any number of letters or characters placed side by side make an integral number of points. This is called point set.
Also, in case a number of differently faced type with the same body are used in the same line, they are so cast that the different faces line with each other as well as if they were all of the same face.
The system goes still further and makes it possible to use different sizes of type in the same line without difficulty in alignment. This is done by making the lining of the different sizes vary by points, so that the difference can easily be built in with leads and slugs, see page [14]. This line has three different faces and two sizes of type.
Spacing of Words and Letters. Quads and spaces are pieces of metal shorter than the type, and are used to make blank spaces between words and at the ends of lines shorter than the measure.
Fig. 2.
In any size of type there are four kinds of quads. Fig 2 shows the ends of the 8 and 12 point quads and spaces. An em quad is the square of the type body. The 10 point em quad is a square quad whose sides are 10 points wide. An eight point em quad is 8 points or one-ninth of an inch square.
An en quad of any size type is one-half the em quad of that size of type. A two em quad of any size type is equal to two of the square or em quads, and a three em quad is equal to three of the square or em quads laid side by side.
There are four of the thinner blanks in any size of type, known as spaces. The 3-em space is one-third of the em quad; the 4-em space one-fourth of the em quad; and the 5-em space is one-fifth of the em quad. The hair spaces are very thin spaces of copper and brass. These are very seldomly needed in general work.
The em quad must be clearly distinguished from the em pica. Every size of type has its em quad; but the em pica is simply the 12 point standard unit of measurement.
Type Font. A quantity of the same size and face of type with an assortment of the various letters and characters which are used together is called a font. Sometimes fonts are designated by the number of certain letters they contain. A font may be mentioned as having so many capital A’s and so many small a’s.
Type may be bought in weight or job fonts. If bought by weight, it contains capitals, small capitals, small or lower case letters, including ligatures (ff, fi, etc.), figures, marks of punctuation, spaces and quads. Twenty per cent of a weight font is made up of spaces and quads unless otherwise specified. Job fonts are small assortments of type, where only small quantities or unusual faces are needed. Such fonts do not include small capitals, spaces or quads.
Fonts or parts of fonts come from the foundry wrapped in small packages. The capitals, the small letters, and the quads and spaces come, of course, in separate packages. The letters are arranged for the most part in alphabetical order; but there is an occasional insertion of a mark of punctuation or a thin bodied letter out of regular order to fill out a line.
In taking the type from these packages, the entire face side of the mass of type is wet with soapy water. Then, beginning with the first of the alphabet, a few letters are taken at a time and put into the proper boxes of the case. This is called laying the case.
Fig. 3. NEWS CASES.
Fig. 4. JOB CASE.
Type Cases. Type cases, Figs. 3 and 4, in which type is kept are of two general kinds, news and job. News cases are in pairs, the upper and the lower case, arranged to occupy a position one above the other on top of the stand or cabinet, Fig. 5. The upper case contains the capitals, small capitals, and an assortment of signs and symbols. The lower case contains the small letters, numerals, marks of punctuation, quads and spaces. The California job case is about the size of the lower news case and fits like a drawer into a stand or cabinet. It is arranged to contain both the capitals and lower case type, but is without boxes for the small capitals. By reference to Fig. 4, it will be seen that the left side of the job case is exactly the same as the entire lower news case, except that the compartments are smaller.
Fig. 5.
The right side of the job case contains only thirty-five boxes for capitals instead of forty-nine, as in the capital side of the upper news case.
It will be observed that the capital letters are in regular order in the case with the exception of J and U. It is interesting to note that these two letters were the last to be added to the alphabet, and hence were simply placed at the last of the alphabet in the case.
In the lower case there is but little regularity of arrangement, except that the most commonly used letters occupy the most convenient and conspicuous places. The printer knows the locations of the various boxes, so that the picking out of a certain letter becomes almost purely automatic.