TYPOGRAPHIC TECHNICAL SERIES FOR APPRENTICES—PART I. NO. 1

TYPE

A PRIMER of INFORMATION ABOUT THE
MECHANICAL FEATURES OF PRINTING
TYPES: THEIR SIZES, FONT SCHEMES, &c.
WITH A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF
THEIR MANUFACTURE

COMPILED BY

A. A. STEWART

PUBLISHED BY THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
UNITED TYPOTHETAE OF AMERICA
1918

Copyright, 1918
United Typothetae of America
Chicago, Ill.

Composition by
Pupils in the Typothetae School of Printing
North End Union, Boston

PREFACE

This treatise is the first of a series of text-books, published under the general title of Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices, which have been prepared under the auspices of the Committee on Education of the United Typothetae of America, for the use of printers’ apprentices and students of typographic printing.

As will be noted by the table of contents, only the mechanical features of type and the usual methods of its manufacture have been considered here. No attempt has been made to review the history of type-faces or the development of type-making processes. These phases of the subject are considered in other publications of the series (see p. 36) and in supplementary reading recommended for students (p. 28).

It is not what they are but what they can be made to do under the control of trained intelligence and skilful hands that makes printer’s types of importance to the world. No tools used in modern industry seem simpler than these little pieces of metal, yet they are the product of the most highly specialized skill and ingeniously perfected mechanisms. To the young printer their physical elements are matters of first concern. An understanding of these elements may be only a small part of his trade education, but it is important. The possibilities and the limitations of type can be appreciated only by thorough familiarity with the technical details and niceties provided by the modern typefounder.

A special feature of this series of technical publications is the list of Review Questions, which will be found at the end of each treatise (see pp. 29-31). These questions cover the essential points in each subject and will be of assistance to instructors, for examinations, etc. A list of the other titles of the series, as well as a statement of their plan and scope, will be found on pp. i-vii of this publication.

CONTENTS

MECHANICAL FEATURES OF TYPE

Printing owes its development first and chiefly to movable metal types. The so-called invention of printing was the discovery of a method of making serviceable type in quantity. The idea of a separate type for each letter of the alphabet was probably conceived long before Gutenberg’s time, but it remained for him and his associates to devise an apparatus for making them quickly and accurately enough to be of practical value. That apparatus was the type mold, which experience has since proved to be the most efficient means of securing exactness and uniformity in a number of small pieces of metal.

Type is made of an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony. Its length (technically called height-to-paper) is .918 of an inch. Each type is cast separately in a mold, and has the letter or printing character in bold relief on one end.

Exact uniformity of body is necessary in order that the types, when composed in lines and pages, may be locked together by pressure at the sides so as to make a compact mass. All types in a printing form must be of the same height, so that their faces may present a uniformly level surface from which an impression may be made that will show all the characters clearly. A short type will print faintly or will not print at all, while a long one will be unduly forced into the sheet.

There are on an average about one hundred and fifty roman letters and other characters required in ordinary book printing. These letters are divided into a number of classes: full-body letters, ascending letters, descending letters, short letters; and in some cases, small capitals, which are larger than short letters but not so tall as capitals or ascenders. Only a few letters, like J and Q, cover nearly the entire surface on the end of the type; other letters, like B h l i, cover the upper portion chiefly and leave a blank space at the bottom; while the small letters, like a e o u v, occupy only the middle portion of the surface; still others, like g y p, cover the middle and lower portions of the surface. As all these irregular shapes must be made to appear in line with each other, the type-body on which they are made is larger than the letter. The blank parts around the face of a letter are called the counter, the shoulder, and the beard. The counter is the shallow place between the lines of the face. The shoulder is the low flat part of the type around the face. The beard is the sloping part between the face and the shoulder.

An important feature of a type is the nick on the side of the body. In many cases there may be two, three, or even four nicks on a type. Usually all the types of a font have nicks that are identical in number and position, and when the types are composed in lines these nicks match each other and form continuous grooves on the lower part of the line of type.

The nicks serve as guides to the compositor when taking the type from the case to his composing stick, and they assist in distinguishing the types of one font or face from those of another on the same size of body.[1] Individual letters of different type faces sometimes bear such close resemblance that they are more readily distinguished by the nick or some other body-mark than by the face. A difference in alignment of nicks in a line will readily show the presence of a wrong-font letter. Typefounders sometimes make an extra nick on a few small-capitals (o s v w x z) in order to distinguish these types from the lower-case letters of the same font.

A Font of Type

A font of type is an assortment of one size and kind that is used together. It is usually all the type in the composing-room of a certain kind matching in body, nick, and face. A small font may be held in one case, but several cases may be required for a font of large quantity.

An ordinary font of roman type for book work will include these characters:

Roman Capitals—A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Æ Œ

Small Capitals—a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z æ œ

Lower-case Letters[2]—a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z æ œ fi fl ff ffi ffl

Figures—1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 (or oldstyle )

Marks of Punctuation—Period . comma , colon : semi-colon ; hyphen - apostrophe ’ exclamation mark ! question mark ? parenthesis ( bracket [ The latter two are used in pairs () [], the second type being set in reversed position.

Quotation Marks are made by two inverted commas “ at the beginning and two apostrophes ” at the end of the quoted matter. In some fonts there is a double mark |"| |"| cast on single bodies, but these are not often used.

Dashes—En – em — two-em —— three-em ———

Reference Marks—Asterisk or star * dagger † double dagger ‡ section § parallel ‖ paragraph ¶ index (hand, or fist) ☞

Braces—Two-em three-em pieced braces made on em bodies, which may be extended more or less with dashes

The dollar-mark $, short-and (or round-and) &, and sterling pound-mark £ are also included with all full fonts.

The character is an old-style ligature (two joined letters cast on one type) made in some fonts of old-style faces. It is one of the many letter combinations formerly common, in imitation of the work of old manuscript writers.

Many styles of roman types have italic letters to match, but the italic fonts include only capitals, lower-case, figures, and punctuation marks:

Italic Capitals—A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Æ Œ

Italic Lower-case—a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z æ œ

Italic Figures—1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 ()

Italic Points, etc.[3]—. , : ; - ’ ! ? ) $ &

Small capitals are not made for italic fonts, except in rare cases. When they are needed in composition, capitals of a smaller size of type are justified into the text line.

Other extra characters, not included in ordinary fonts but which may be added when required, are accented letters (â é ë ī ō û etc.), fractions ¾ ⁵⁄₁₃ etc.), mathematical signs (+ × ÷ = etc.), superior (^{ab 42}) and inferior (_{ab 12}) letters and figures, leaders (…………), commercial signs (@ ℔ ⅌ ℀ ¢), and many other characters for special kinds of printing.

Fonts of advertising, jobbing, and display types usually consist of the capitals, lower-case letters, figures, and points, with occasionally a few extra characters. For many recent styles of heavy faces the founders furnish fractions, accented letters, and other special characters to match in boldness of face, but these are not included in ordinary letter-fonts.

The quantity of each character apportioned to a regular font is the estimated average required for ordinary composition in the English language. It is rare that more than a fraction of a small font can be used in any piece of composition. No general scheme can meet the needs of every kind of work; tables and statistical matter will need extra figures, directories and other lists will call for surplus capitals, dialogue matter will need more than the usual portion of commas and apostrophes for quote-marks; even plain descriptive composition will often call for extra “sorts.” For these and other peculiar kinds of composition extra quantities of some characters, as well as other material, must be provided.

Ordinary roman and other faces used in large quantities are measured by weight. The proportion of letters in a 100-pound font, showing the proportions of each character, is given on the next page. Miscellaneous faces used in small quantities are put up in fonts containing a certain number of each letter, the size of the font being designated by the number of capital A’s and lower-case a’s it contains.

A WEIGHT FONT

Weight fonts of body type are usually put up by the founders in sections or parts of fonts as given in the above summary of totals, so that one or more of these sections may be obtained to supplement a font already in use.

It will be noted that braces, dashes, and reference-marks are omitted in the above list. These characters, like fractions, commercial signs, etc., are not now considered parts of ordinary fonts, but are put up in separate packages and must be specially ordered when wanted.

Font schemes apportioned in quantities like the foregoing are more or less closely adhered to for original packages of foundry-cast type. To insure precision, when ordering, it is necessary to state not only the quantity (by number of letters or weight) but also whether a complete font or part of a complete font (capital font, lower-case font, or figure font) is referred to.

The Sizes of Type

All printing type has, first, a name denoting its size, and second, one denoting the style of its face. For instance, the type used for the text of this book is 10-point (its size) Lining Caslon Oldstyle (the foundry name of its face).

The size of a type is the vertical thickness of its body—the thickness of a line up and down the page. The width of a type is its set. Thus a 12-point en-quad is 12-point body and 6-point set, a 10-point figure of the thickness of an en quad is 10-point body and 5-point set, etc. The total length of a type, including feet and face, is its height-to-paper.

American type sizes conform to a graduated scale known as the point system. The unit of the system is a division of space called a point, which is .0138+ (approximately ¹⁄₇₂) of an inch. Type bodies are multiples of this point.

The usual sizes are graduated by points up to 12-point. Sizes above 18-point are multiples of 6-point up to 60-point (18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 54, 60). Larger sizes are 72-point, 84-point (rare), 96-point, 120-point, and 144-point, the latter being the largest type commonly cast in a mold.

In addition to the small sizes shown in the accompanying illustration, there are some intermediate sizes like 5½-point and 4½-point, and type as small as 3-point has been made. These are rare, however, as type smaller than 5½-point is not practicable for extended use. These small sizes are employed for special purposes, like miniature editions of books (parts of the Bible, prayer books, etc.) cut-in notes, piece-fractions, small borders, special characters, and occasional words or lines that are required to be put in the smallest possible space. The size of type known as agate (fourteen lines to an inch) is considered the common standard of measurement for newspaper and magazine advertising space.

Many plain types for books, periodicals, etc., are made only in small sizes. Certain faces are made in a few sizes only, while others are made in more or less complete series from 6-point to 48-point. The irregular sizes of 5½-point, 7-point, 9-point, and 11-point are mostly roman faces, with companion italics, and a few bolder styles for headings and other display in combination with romans of the same body. Many new faces are now made by founders in graded series from 6-point to 72-point, and in some cases even larger. Type faces adapted to many kinds of work are made in nearly all the regular sizes, while those faces designed for small and dainty work, like personal and society cards and stationery, are made only in the smaller sizes of the list.

Types are now often cast with faces larger or smaller than is commonly made on the body, such as a 12-point face on 10-point body, giving the effect of compactness; or an 8-point face made on a 10-point body, which gives a lighter appearance as if opened with 2-point leads. These are known as bastard types. Because of this irregularity in the faces of types it is difficult to know the exact body-size of a type by merely examining a printed sheet.

Borders, ornaments, florets, and decorative characters cast on type-bodies are now made mostly in sizes based on the 6-point as the unit (6, 12, 18, 24-point, and larger multiples), but 8-point, 10-point, and 14-point sizes are sometimes used.

Before the adoption of the point system, type sizes were named in a haphazard way. Arbitrary names were given to certain sizes and in many cases types of the same name made by different founders varied so much in size that they could not be used together without great inconvenience to the printer. Some of these old names still survive and are applied to the point-system bodies which approximate the old sizes.

While these old names and their sizes are now nearly obsolete, young printers should learn the names and associate them with their corresponding sizes of the point system. In the foregoing list there are several intermediate sizes (16, 20, 22, 28, 32, 40, 44-point) rarely used for type of recent design. Fonts of these odd sizes may be sometimes found, and there has been a size of 15-point made, but little used. These odd sizes are, however, mostly old faces, scripts, and black-letter, originally cast on old bodies and later, after the introduction of the point system, made on new point-bodies which are nearest to their original sizes.

The point system has been applied to the width of types, as well as to the body-size; that is, the set of each type is fixed at a given number of points or fraction thereof. This method simplifies in a degree the process of accurate justification, as each line, though containing various letters and spaces, is composed of the same number of units. An advantage over the old method of unrelated widths is in the saving of time in composition, by reducing the number of different widths in the characters of the alphabet. By the old method each type had its own special width; in a complete font there might be a hundred or more different widths. By the modern point system those characters which are nearly alike in width are made on the same set, or, if different, the variation is governed by the standard unit.

Lining Type Faces