Courtesy The Riverside Press.
WHERE THIS BOOK WAS SET UP
The monotype girl wrote these words on her keyboard, where they made tiny holes in a roll of paper. The roll went to the casting-room where it guided a machine to make the type much as a perforated music-roll guides a piano to play a tune.
The type is kept in a case at which the compositor stands. This case is divided into shallow compartments, each compartment containing a great many e's or m's as the case may be. The "upper case" contains capitals; the "lower case," small letters. Those letters which are used most often are put where the compositor can reach them most readily. He stands before his case with a "composing
stick" in his hand. This "stick" is a little iron frame with a slide at the side, so that the line can be made of any length desired. The workman soon learns where each letter is, and even an apprentice can set the type in his stick reasonably rapidly. On one side of every piece of type there is a groove, so that he can tell by touch whether it is right side up or not. He must look out especially to make his right-hand margins regular. You will notice in books that the lines are all of the same length, although they do not contain the same number of letters. The compositor brings this about by arranging his words and spaces skillfully. The spaces must be as nearly as possible of the same length, and yet the line must be properly filled. If a line is too full, he can sometimes place the last syllable on the following line; if it is not full enough, he can borrow a syllable, and he can at least divide his space so evenly that the line will not look as if it were broken in two.
Not many years ago all type was set in this manner; but several machines have now been invented which will do this work. In one of the best of them the operator sits before a keyboard much like that of a typewriter. When he presses key a, for instance, a mould or matrix of the letter a is set free from a tube of a's, and slides down to its place in the stick. At the end of the line, the matrices forming it are carried in front of a slot where melted type metal from a reservoir meets them. Thus a cast is made of the matrices, and from this cast the printing
is done. This machine is called a linotype because it casts a whole line of type at a time.
Most book work is done on the monotype machine. When a manuscript goes to the press to be set up in this way, the copy is given to the keyboard operator who sets it up on a machine which looks much like a typewriter. Instead of writing letters, however, the machine punches tiny holes in a strip of paper which is wound on a roll. When the roll is full it goes to the casting room where it is put on another machine containing hot type metal and bronze matrices from which the letters of the words are to be cast. The holes in the paper guide the machine to make the type much as a perforated music roll guides a piano to play a tune. The reason why the machine is called a monotype is that the letters are made one at a time, and monos is the Greek word for one.
By the linotype and monotype machines type can be set in a "galley," a narrow tray about two feet long, with ledges on three sides. When a convenient number of these galleys have been filled, long slips are printed from them called "galley proofs." These have wide margins, but the print is of the width that the page of the book will be. They are read by the proof-readers, and all such mistakes as the slipping in of a wrong letter, or a broken type, the repetition of a word, or the omission of space between words are corrected. Then the proof goes to the author, who makes any changes in his part of the work which seem to him desirable; and it is also