Typesetting is a particularly satisfactory craft to tackle because it combines in nearly equal degrees manual skills and the skills required of a designer. The compositor, as Holbrook Jackson says, is ‘the mason of typography and type-setting is still a craft like bricklaying’. Careful, readable setting of type is the foundation of all good printing and it must be recognized that every individual task undertaken has within it some decision affecting its design. It would be wrong to think that a compositor is just a mechanic: he is never far removed from being a creative craftsman.
Type is put into a case which is divided into compartments containing the lower case letters, the capital letters (upper case), numerals, punctuation marks and the various spaces which are normally required. The compartments of the case are not of uniform size because some letters are used more frequently than others and of these a larger supply will be needed: the case generally used accommodates the complete roman alphabet of small letters and capitals: a companion case would be needed for a complete italic alphabet: and yet another case will be required to provide for small capitals and any large capitals wanted for display.
Reference: From the book of Herbert Simon, “Introduction to Printing: The craft of Letterpress” page #2.
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