PARAGRAPHS ON PRINTING

NOTE: The text for this book on the functions of the book designer was elicited from B.R. in talks with James Hendrickson. These informal observations on typographical problems were accompanied by numerous reproductions of pages of Mr. Rogers' design, by way of illustration and example.

You think of the book, the size and shape of the book, before you consider type or anything else. What kind of a volume should it be? In what particular form and in what face of type would you like to read it? The type and format should be governed by your conception of the character of the subject matter. As an instance take Conrad's tale, The Tremolino, recently printed. It is a slight but vivid story, to be read almost at a glance, so it would have been a misfit to make it larger, say in octavo size. The vividness is indicated by the dramatic little cuts in color, the slightness by the dimensions and open character of the pages.

After the size is determined the selection of a suitable type comes next. And that depends usually on what types are available in the office in which the book is to be made. Even this is not always necessary, as many offices have composition done outside by type-composition firms, so that an almost unlimited choice may be yours. There are so many varieties of type now, that for almost any size or kind of book you plan you will readily find an appropriate face. At any rate it isn't so vitally important as other things.

It is a great advantage in laying out a page, especially a title or display page, if the designer can handle pen or pencil; and the more definitely he can represent the type he proposes to use, the greater saving of time and expense there will be when it comes to the setting of it. It is true that some masters of printing do not resort to sketching—at least not more than mere lines on the paper, labeled with the kinds and sizes of type they represent. But to visualize the completed page in such slight indications is an unusual gift, and if one does not possess this gift there is the probability that the first setting of the page will have to be torn apart several times before a satisfactory one is produced. It is sometimes well worth while to work a page out very carefully, even in pen-and-ink, so that it will be a pretty close approximation to the finished thing; especially if you have to submit the scheme to a customer for his approval, or if he asks to see alternative treatments.

Of course, after many years of familiarity with type faces, it isn't necessary to draw them accurately for your own guidance, even though you should possess that ability; but some nevertheless find it a pleasant thing to see the page take form under their pencil or pen before it goes into actual type. Frequently, however, there is a sense of disappointment in seeing the first type proof, for the freedom and swing of your sketch has usually vanished in its translation into type; and the more formal the style of type the less it will retain the quality of your sketch.

Making an "allusive" format for a book—that is, casting it in the style of the period of the original text—is in a small way something like planning the stage setting for a play. An up-to-date style for an ancient text would compare with staging Hamlet in modern dress. However novel and effective in its own way, you feel it to be strange, and this sense of strangeness is an annoying distraction; you are forced to think of the setting and the designer rather than of the text.

The character of the text to be printed is of course the first thing to consider in selecting the kind of type; and the number of pages to which the book will probably run is the determining factor as to what size of type is possible. The width and length of the type page are then to be proportioned to the paper page, which in turn also helps to determine the size of the type. All these considerations are interlocking.

There have been several rules formulated for page proportions. One is that the width of the page should approximate one-half of the diagonal. Another is that the length of line should be one-half more than the length of a line of the twenty-six lower-case letters of the type used. But all such rules are only guides, to be discarded when the effect you are after seems to require something else; this something else to be determined only by the judgment of the designer and his feeling for the appearance of the page. In the reproduction of the styles of early typography the designer should avoid setting small type in too wide a measure. The old printers in their folio volumes did not seem to mind very long lines of comparatively small type. But most of these ancient books in Roman type were never intended for rapid reading. They were generally Latin texts where the eye follows the line better than in English or French composition. Latin composition naturally makes more beautiful pages on account of the preponderance of short letters—m, n, u, etc., with comparatively few ascenders and descenders. The evenness of spacing that the early printers got came from their abundant use of Latin abbreviations and their indifference as to how many consecutive word divisions occurred at the ends of lines, but it was never a conscious effort to obtain what is called "texture" in the page. There should be no laboring to produce a perfectly spaced page but rather an endeavor to avoid a badly spaced one.

The amount of leading that a page requires depends on so many factors that it is difficult to give any fixed method of procedure. The kind of type, the size of type, the length of line and the general character of the text all bear on this point. Generally speaking, most types should be at least slightly leaded, especially if the lines are fairly long. This helps the eye to catch the following line in rapid reading more easily than when the type is set solidly. The solid pages were usually adopted when old-style types were used exclusively; but when modern type came in, beginning with Bodoni, the custom of leading, sometimes double-leading, arose. The effect of these new types was helped by a generous amount of white paper between the lines. This applies to Bodoni, Bulmer, and the Scotch face and their derivatives. Antique types were, however, occasionally very freely leaded, especially in Spanish books of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

The conventional use of quotation marks is to place a double mark at the beginning and end of the passage quoted, with single marks for any quotations within it. In books with much conversation the use of double quotes frequently results in very mottled typography, and for many years some English printers have adopted the single mark for the major quotations, using double marks only if an inner quote occurs. This violates, a little, one's sense of relative importance, but in a book where there are only simple quotations there is no reason why the single mark should not suffice, much to the visual improvement of the typography. There is some possibility of confusion if the last word of the extract should chance to be a possessive plural, with an apostrophe, as the two marks are identical; but this occurs so infrequently as to be negligible.

Inverted commas were used for opening quotes in most founts until comparatively recent years, but now a separate pattern is provided for most founts. Reversed, instead of inverted commas now accompany many founts, particularly the reproductions of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century types, at which time they were first introduced.

French, Spanish and other continental founders furnish a special design of marks, « »; but these look rather strange to Anglo-Saxon eyes.

In Elizabethan printing the quotation marks sometimes ran entirely down the margins of the extracts, and if, as was frequently the case, the page was enclosed with rules, they were often placed outside the rules. This treatment occurs in one of the handsomest books of that period, Nobilitas Politica vel Civilis, printed in 1608 by William Jaggard, the printer of the First Folio fifteen years later. The Nobilitas is generally accounted the masterpiece of his press, and in itself comprises nearly all of the various typographical features of books of that time. Large and small types, Roman, Italic, black-letter and Anglo-Saxon, both solid and leaded pages, tabular work with handsome braces, side notes, woodcut initials, head-pieces and tailpieces, and a series of costume plates engraved on copper and printed within the rules on folioed blank pages left for them in the form—all go toward making a book that is a compendious example for students of Elizabethan typography.

Red is the most satisfactory secondary color with black, and you will often find that it is better to use just one spot of color on the page. In using red for an occasional display line, blue-red or purple-red or orange-red should be avoided. A red such as the early printers had, a full-bodied, rather dull vermilion, which will hold up well with the black, is the most successful. If it is desirable to employ the blue for a border or an initial it shows up much more brilliantly when the design is in white on a solid or stippled ground of the blue. An outline design in blue is too light in mass to accompany the black of the type. But black and blue alone are never so pleasing a combination as when red is introduced as the second color, with blue as the third.

The black for the text or reading types should be intense without being glossy, because the gloss causes a reflection of light and interferes with legibility. The same objection does not apply to colors, for a moderate gloss enriches them and overcomes a sort of dustiness that their surfaces take on.

The text pages of most books should be printed in black ink.[36] The tendency of a young printer is often to try for novelty by printing with color rather than with black, not realizing that most types were not designed for anything but black on white. If, however, the job is somewhat aside from the usual run of books, and is not of too great extent, a brown or green ink may be substituted for black if the tint be dark enough to afford perfect legibility. But the result then acquires something of the character of an object of art rather than a book.

Letter-spacing is often misused. It is safe to say that lower-case type should practically never be letter-spaced, for the individual letters were designed for close combination with other letters of the alphabet. If it becomes necessary to fill out a line it is preferable to put all the extra space between the words even though the resultant "holes" are distressing to the eye. Sometimes with very large types it is permissible to letter-space in a minor degree, as the spaces between the letters naturally are larger and letter-spacing does not detract too much from the appearance of the line, especially if it is distributed according to the irregular space between the different letters as normally set.

With capitals or upper-case letters the conditions are different. Then it is frequently a great advantage to use letter-spaces, even considerably; but this depends upon the general style of the typography adopted for the book. In the hands of some contemporary printers the Aldine practice of wide letter-spacing of small capitals has been followed quite skilfully in title- or subtitle lines, chapter headings, and other display work. This is of particular advantage with the rather heavy-faced modern types, i.e., Scotch, Bodoni, etc.

It is well to avoid too many, and too open letter-spaced lines in any kind of display composition, for the effect is sometimes disastrous. Baskerville was very fond of letter-spacing and most of his work is, in that respect, extremely ugly.[37] He sometimes pushed spacing to the point of absurdity; notably in his great Bible, where in the heading of the Book of Job he set the letters J O B in capitals of about 48-point size with three inches of space between them. It could hardly be called a word, but rather just a bad job of type-setting.

The practice of letter-spacing to produce blocked-out lines of capitals must be done with great caution and skill or else a very uneven texture will be produced. Frequently it is better to abandon the idea of a block of type if the spacing cannot be done with a fairly uniform effect. It is a mistake to start with a determination to produce a block of type and then to persist in it at any cost of legibility or appearance. When lines of capitals are set without leading, letter-spacing should never be used. The leading should be in proportion to the spacing in order to keep the continuity of the lines of type, otherwise you will produce columns of letters instead of lines. It is hardly necessary to say that the best letter-spacing is not done with uniform spaces between the letters. The spacing on either side of a letter should be determined by the shape of the adjacent letters. Most compositors have now learned to use spaces according to the shape of the letters, but the cutting of such letters as V, W, to make them set closer than their natural width is usually very much overdone. The new logotypes cut for this purpose are equally faulty in this respect. The resulting effect is more noticeable and more objectionable than the natural setting of the type would be. Anything that strikes the eye as strange or unusual in a line of type is to be avoided.

Periods and commas of letter-spaced capitals should not be set off from the last letter of the word, regardless of the amount of spacing used elsewhere in the line.

Colons and semicolons have traditionally been set apart from the word they follow, whether in capitals or lower case. In old books they are frequently centered in the space between the words where they occur. Exclamation and interrogation points should if possible be set off with thin spaces because they often form disagreeable and confusing combinations with the last letter of the word, such as ff!, ll!, f?, etc.

COMPOSED IN CENTAUR AND ARRIGHI TYPES

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Of the more than half-thousand books that Mr. Rogers has designed, only four come to mind as having the text matter printed in anything other than black; and these four were all slight volumes, more or less in the gift-book classification.

[37] "When we look at his books we think of Baskerville; while to look at the work of Jenson is to think but of its beauty, and almost to forget that it was made with hands!" UPDIKE, Printing Types, II, p. 116.