xvᵉ et au xviᵉ siècle (Paris, 1900–1904); W. P. Courtney, A Register
of Nation. Bibliography (2 vols., London, 1905); J. P. Edmond,
Catal. of Early Printed Books in the library of the Society of Writers
to the Signet (Edinburgh, 1906); Ehwald, Handschr. u. Inkunabeln
der Gymnasialbibliothek zu Gotha, 4to (Gotha, 1893); Will. J. van
Eys, Bibliogr. des Bibles et des Nouv. Testaments en langue franç.
(Genève, 1900); John Ferguson, Some Aspects of Bibliography
(Edinburgh, 1900); G. Fumagalli, Lexicon typographicum Italiae;
Diction. géogr. d'Italie (Florence); Gravures sur bois tirées des livres
français du xvᵉ siècle (Paris, 1868); Konrad Haebler, Typenrepertorium
der Wiegendrucke (Halle, 1905, 1908); idem, Typographie
ibérique du xvᵉ siècle (La Haye, Leipzig, 1902; 87 plates); idem, Bibliografia
iberica del siglo xv. (La Haye, Leipzig, 1903); Otto Günther,
Die Wiegendrucke der Leipziger Sammlungen (Leipzig, 1909); Alb.
Hubl, Die Inkunabeln der Biblioth. des Stiftes Schotten in Wien (Vienna
and Leipzig, 1904); L'Imprimerie hors l'Europe, par un bibliophile
(Paris, 1902); Ad. Knütgen, Incunabeln im kön. kathol. Gymnasium zu
Heiligenstadt (Heiligenstadt, 1888); Paul Lacombe, Livres d'heures
imprimés au xvᵉ et au xviᵉ siècle (Paris, 1907); Ad. Lange, Peter
Schöffer (Leipzig, 1864); H. O. Lange, Analecta bibliographica
(Copenhagen, 1906); F. Madan, The University Press at Oxford
(Oxford, 1908); Baron F. del Marmol, Diction. des filigranes (Namur,
1900); Joh. Jac. Merlo, Ulrich Zell, ed. Otto Zaretzky (Cologne,
1900); Henri Monceaux, Les Le Rouge de Chablis, calligraphes et miniaturistes,
graveurs et imprimeurs (Paris, 1896); R. A. Peddie, Printing
at Brescia in the 15th Century (London, 1905); Marie Pellechet,
Catal. général des incunables des bibliothèques publiques de France
(Paris, 1897); M. A. Péricaud, Bibliogr. lyonnaise du xvᵉ siècle
(Lyons, 1861); J. Philippe, Origine de l'imprimerie à Paris (Paris,
1885); Guillaume Fichet, Introduction de l'imprimerie à Paris
(Paris, 1892); Henr. R. Plomer, Hist. of English Printing, 1476–1898
(London, 1900); G. R. Redgrave, Erhard Ratdolt and his work at
Venice (London, 1894); Fr. Reiber, De primordiis artis imprimendi
ac praecipue de invention typographiae Harlemensi (Berol., 1856);
Ph. Renouard, Bibliographie des impressions et des œuvres de Josse
Badins Ascensius, 1462–1535 (Paris, 1908); Seymour de Ricci, A Census
of Caxtons (London, fol., 1909); Duc de Rivoli, Bibliogr. des livres à
figures vénit., 1469–1525 (Paris, 1892); Paul Schwenke, Untersuch.
zur Geschichte des ersten Buchdrucks, herausgeg. von der königl. Bibl.
zu Berlin (1900); L. C. Silvestre, Marques typographiques (Paris,
1853); Dav. E. Smith, Rara arithmetica, in the library of Geo. Arthur
Plimpton of New York (Boston and London, 1908); Henri Stein,
Manuel de bibliographies gén. (Paris, 1897); C. H. Timperley, Encyclopaedia
of Literary and Typographical Anecdote (2nd ed., London,
1842); Tijdschrift voor boek-en bibliotheekwezen (Antwerp, Ghent,
1903); Léon Vallée, Bibliogr. des bibliographies (Paris, 1897); Herm.
Varnhagen, Eine Sammlung alter italien. Drucke der Erlanger Universitätsbibliothek
(Erlangen, 1892); Ernst Voulliéme, Der Buchdruck
Kölns bis zum Ende des XV. Jahrhunderts (Bonn, 1903); idem, Die
Incunabeln der kön. Universitäts-Bibl. zu Bonn (Leipzig, 1894);
W. H. J. Weale, Bibliographia Liturgica (London, 1886).
The titles of other works on the invention, progress and process of printing, &c., may be learnt from the lists of books on such subjects in the works already quoted. Also the catalogues of secondhand booksellers, as Jos. Baehr (Frankfurt), Harrowitz (Berlin), Leo S. Olschki (Florence), Bern. Quaritch and W. M. Voynich (London), Jaques Rosenthal, Ludw. Rosenthal (Munich), &c. (J. H. H.)
II.—Modern Practical Typography
The printing surfaces used in the production of books and newspapers, apart from wood- or process-blocks and casts, and apart also from such surfaces as are obtained by means of the Linotype and kindred machines, are made up primarily of an aggregation of separate types, each representing a letter, mark or sign, though the actual surface employed on the printing press is frequently a duplicate copy made by a process of stereotyping or electrotyping.
Material Characteristics of Type.—A fount consists of a proportioned quantity of each of these letters and signs of any one particular body and face. It therefore contains single letters, both capitals (“upper case”) and small letters (“lower case”), diphthongs, ligatures, such as ff, fl, accents, points, figures, fractions, commercial signs such as @, £, “peculiars” such as *, † and leaders (. . .), together with quads (pieces of metal which do not print, but are used to compensate for the shortness of occasional lines, as at the end of a paragraph), and spaces which separate words. A fount may thus have about 275 characters or sorts, about 100 of them consisting of italic letters, points and figures.
The numbers of the different sorts vary with different languages, and even with the style of different writers, the works of Charles Dickens, for instance, making unusually heavy demands on the vowels, while the writings of Lord Macaulay run with like persistence on the consonants. Type-founders determine the proportions of the different sorts according to a bill of type, or scheme, either numerically, when the basis of the computation is the number of lower case m's (or of A's, in the case of display type used for headings) or by weight. In the second method a fount of 125 ℔ of Roman type includes, on one scheme, 8 oz. of E, M, C; 9 oz. of T; 8 ℔ of e; 5 ℔ each of a, b, n, o, t; and so on down to 3 oz. of z. A fount of body-letters, that is those used for the reading matter of books and newspapers, as made up by one British type-founder, contains capitals 9% by weight, small capitals 4%, figures 6%, lower case letters, points and leaders 56%, spaces 15% and quads 10%; rules, accents and fractions not being supplied except in new complete founts or when specially asked for. A rule for estimating the quantity of type required for a page is to divide the number of square inches it contains by 4, when the quotient represents approximately the weight of type in ℔. But for large founts 25% and for small ones 40% should be allowed in addition, on account of unused type in the cases which cannot be completely set.
For many years it was a favourite idea with inventors, especially those who were not practical printers, that great economy might be gained in composition by the use of word characters, or “logotypes,” instead of single letters. The constant recurrence of certain words such as “the,” “and,” “is,” suggested that they, as well as afiixes and sulhxes like ad-, ac-, -ing, -ment, Logotypes. should be cast in single pieces instead of being set up with their component letters. Such logotypic printing was used in 1785 in the London Daily Universal Register, which three years later became The Times, but it has never found general favour. The chief practical objection is that it involves the use of cases with an inconveniently large number of boxes. The greater the variety of characters the more “travel” of the compositor's hand over the cases is necessary for picking them up, and by so much is the speed of his work retarded.
 |
| Fig. 1.—Finished Type. |
Each of the parts of a type has a technical name. In fig. 1,
representing the capital letter M, the darkest space a, a, a, a, is called
the face; and only that part of the type touches the
paper in printing. The face is divided into the stem,
marked 1, which comprises the whole outline of the
type M; the serifs, or the horizontal lines marked 2, which complete
Parts of a Type.
the outline of the letter; the beard, consisting
of the bevel or sloping part marked b, b, and
the shoulder or flat portion below b. The shank
is the entire body of the letter d, the front part
(that shown) being known as the belly and the
corresponding part behind as the back. The
spaces at h and h are the counters, which regulate
the distances apart of the stems in a line of
type. The hollow groove extending across the
shank at e, e is the nick, which enables the
workman to recognize the direction of the type
and to distinguish different founts of the same
body. The absence of this simple expedient
would retard the operation of hand-setting up
by fully one-half. The earliest type-founders
did not know the use of the nick. If a part of
the face overhangs the shank, this part is called
the kern, but kerned letters are avoided as
much as possible. The groove g divides the bottom of the type
into two parts called the feet. An impression from that part of
a type on which it stands would be as 
. Types must be perfectly
rectangular, the minutest deviation rendering them useless. Any
roughness at the sides is called burr, and any injury to the faces a batter.
Types which have the face cast in the middle of the shank, as a, c, e, m, &c., and thus leave an open space above them corresponding to that below, caused by the beard, are known as short letters. Those whose stem extends to the top of the shank, as b, d, f, &c., are called ascending letters. Those that have a stem extending over the shoulder, as g, p, &c., are called Species of Letter. descending letters. Those that are both ascending and descending, and extend over the whole of the shank, as Q and j, are long letters. Small letters and figures cast upon the upper part of the shank, as 1a, are called superiors; those very low down on the shank are inferiors, as H3. Types that are very heavy and massive in appearance are called fat-faced; those that are fine and delicate, lean-faced. A type whose face is not in proportion to the depth of the shank (e.g. a small pica cast on a pica body) is a bastard type.
Types of are various sizes, from those used for the smallest pocket bibles to those used for large placards, and the sizes are classified according to the dimensions of their ends or bodies. In a given fount the length of the end of the type which bears the face is the same for all characters, but the width varies, an i for example being narrower than a w. Each Sizes of Type. body has a distinctive name, but it used to be a confusing and inconvenient anomaly that types made by different founders, though called by the same name, were not of precisely the same size. The long primer of one maker, for example, was 89 lines to the foot, of another 8912, and of a third 92. This inconvenience was remedied in America by the founders agreeing to adopt a uniform point-system; the pica of 0·16604 in. was taken as a standard, six picas being 0·996 in., and was divided into twelve parts or points of 0·013837 in., other types being cast as multiples of one of these points, and specified according to the number of them they contained. This
system, with the same basic unit, has been adopted by British