No feature of early printing is more unworkmanlike than that of composition. Imitating the style of the manuscript copy, the compositor huddled together words and paragraphs in solid columns of dismal blackness, and sent his forms to press without title, running-titles, chapter-heads and paging-figures. The space for the ornamental borders and letters of the illuminator seems extravagant when contrasted with the pinched spaces between lines and words. The printer trusted to the bright colors of the illuminator to give relief to the blackness of the types, not knowing that a purer relief and greater perspicuity would have been secured by a wider spacing of the words and lines. The obscurity produced by huddled and over-black types was increased by the neglect of simple orthographical rules. Proper names were printed with or without capitals, apparently to suit the whim of the compositor. The comma, colon and period, the only points of punctuation in general use, were employed capriciously and illogically. Crooked and unevenly spaced lines and errors of arrangement or making-up were common. Madden has pointed out several gross blunders, caused by the transposition of lines and pages and an erroneous calculation of the space that should be occupied by print Words were mangled in division, and in the display of lines in capital letters, in a manner that seems inexcusable. But no usage of the early compositor is more annoying than his lawless use of abbreviations. Imitating the example of Procrustes, he made, the words fit, chopping them off on any letter or in any position, indifferent to the wants of the reader or to the proprieties of language.[1] Whatever opinion may be entertained concerning
- ↑ The composition of Schœffer's edition of the Decretals has been injudiciously praised by Bernard. In the fac-simile on page 463, it will be noticed that the page is crooked, and that the justification and making-up are very faulty. In a copy of Torresani's edition of the Decretals, the frequent contractions make the work almost unreadable. This book has been highly commended for its even spacing; but it is a sufficient answer to say that any printer could space admirably, even in the narrowest measure, if allowed to mangle words to suit his convenience.
