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.