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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 1

The Compositor's Eyes

The Compositor's Eyes.

Very few occupations impose so severe a strain upon the eyesight as that of the compositor, and there is no class of artizans among whom near-sightedness is more common. It is not only the poring over bad reprint and crabbed manuscript; it is not only that the work is often carried on under conditions of lighting most injurious to the vision—the severest test of all is that of scrutinizing the faces of minute types to discern the character. Fine faces of rule have to be matched and brought into line; brass rules to be accurately adjusted to type ornaments; right-and left-hand ornamental sorts to be distinguished; characters of difficult scripts and profusely decorated ornamental founts to be discriminated; the face closely scanned for imperfections—and all this under the most varying conditions of the type itself, of accessibility—as for instance in a large form on the machine—and of light or semi-darkness. The proof-reader has all the advantage which a well-printed proof and the contiguous matter can give him; the compositor oftentimes, in the best-arranged offices, has to deal with pie in case, founts more or less mixed, and has to identify and locate perhaps a single and unfamiliar character. Is it any wonder that myopia is so common, and that so many compositors have to take to spectacles before middle age?

Our object in this article is to show that the typefounder, by a more systematic use of that labor-saving device, the nick, and without any extra trouble whatever, may relieve the wearied eyes of the compositor of a vast amount of wholly unnecessary labor. We do not forget that some founders distinguish small caps from lowercase sorts by an extra nick; nor must we omit to recognize here that the Caslon foundry has made one important advance in the systematic use of the nick to discriminate the size of the various spaces,—and the thanks of the trade are due them for so useful and practical a step. We often wish that the managing head of a large foundry could have twelve months of hard work at case in an average job office. It would dissipate not a few of the theories which look so well on paper in the specimen-books, and would lead to thorough and fundamental reforms in many departments. Unfortunately, too, there are too many intermediaries between the man who constructs the type and the toiling compositor who sets it up. The master who works in his own composing-room and sets his own type, is becoming year by year more rare. Hence, when long-delayed reforms are initiated, the more conservative founders tell us loftily that after all, the trade receives them with indifference. We know better.

Another difficulty lies in the fact that suggestions too often meet with scant courtesy. Some of our own ere now have been adopted with advantage, though no acknowledgment, private or otherwise, has been made of the source whence they came. When a suggestion is made for the general good, it is unsatisfactory to find it monopolized by a single house, to whom after all it does not rightly belong.

The first idea of the systematic use of the nick to save the eyesight came to us about ten years ago, when we had to lay a 30lb fount of Fromme's « Pompeii » groundwork, cast by Brendler & Harler, of Vienna. The fount, which was all in pie, had an eventful history. It came out for us in the Queen Bee, and the case went down with the ship on the Farewell Spit. After lying a month or six weeks at the bottom, it was recovered by divers, and sold by auction in Nelson. The packages having given way, the purchaser did not attempt to sort out the pie, which ultimately came into our possession. We found the work of distribution very trying to the eyes, and had more than one headache over the job. The sorts are mostly on emerald em body with one nick. These are some of them:

—We had a few pounds arranged when we made a very satisfactory discovery. In some instances the single nick was near the top—in others near the bottom—in fact, in three or four different places on the several types. Here, we thought, had we been needlessly trying our eyes, when the founder had thoughtfully distinguished the sorts resembling each other by the position of the nick! Alas—further examination soon showed that the nick was quite indiscriminately situated, and the old weary process of staring each character in the face had to be continued to the end. Yet how easy it would have been, by a very slight variation in the position of the single nick, to have accurately distinguished every character—and what an amount of time and toil it would save every time such a fount were composed or distributed!

No better or more difficult illustration of the use of a systematic nick could be given than that of a fount of Greek. There are only twenty-four letters in the alphabet, but there are a formidable array of accented characters. There are seven vowels, and six simple accents, which are combined so as to make fourteen. Therefore besides the ordinary upper and lower-case boxes, a Greek case has seven rows of fourteen boxes each, to accommodate accents alone. This is the scheme of accents:

This specimen shows the accents much more clearly than some founts do. It is a brevier body, and Greek is cut as small as diamond. In distributing, the compositor has to distinguish every one of these accents before he can put the letters in the right box. Every word contains one or more accents. Could a more painful strain than this be imposed upon the eyes? And we must remember that it is only in one position, when the light is reflected straight from its face, that the type can be decyphered at all, and that even then it is not nearly so easy to read as a printed character. Now with a systematic nick, the compositor need never look at the accent, and, moreover, could at a glance, detect an accented type in the wrong place as it lay in his case. There are six kinds of accents. Each would require a distinctive nick. Let them be, for example, indicated as follows:

Lenis (’) Narrow nick near top
Asper (‘) Narrow nick near bottom
Acute (′) Wide nick near top
Grave (′) Wide nick near bottom
Circumflex (^) Wide nick at centre
Diæresis (¨) Two narrow nicks at centre

With these marks, every accent could be readily distinguished. Here are examples of single and compound accents thus indicated:

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Any of our readers can complete the series. That the system is practicable no type-founder would dispute—what an unspeakable boon it would be to the workman, none but a compositor can fully realize. It is simple, no single type having more than three nicks. Moreover the system is one of universal application. The Greek accents shown above, are an exceptionally complex example. In Hebrew, for instance, a very simple variation in the nick would be sufficient to distinguish characters resembling each other so closely as those shown in pairs below:

In half-fractions, an extra nick might distinguish the denominator from the numerator. In all cases of combination borders, shaded designs, right and left hand pieces, &c, where the distinction is slight and only to be detected by close examination, the variation of nick would at once supply the clue. Here for example, is a border from an American foundry. One piece is for use horizontally, the other vertically. The only difference in face is in the direction of the shade, and they are both nicked on the flat side, thus: If A were nicked on the flat, and B on the end, there would be no confusion. As it is, it is impossible to keep them from mixing, and the use of the border is always attended with annoyance. Typefounders—make a little more systematic use of the nick, and study the compositor's eyes!

The reform in type bodies is still causing much discussion in the trade press of England and America, and much curious and important information is finding its way into print. The matter has interested us greatly for many years past, and we have in preparation a series of articles dealing with the defects of the systems now passing away, the advantages of the reform, and the points in which it appears to fall short. The chief obstacle hitherto in the way of reform appears to have been that the typefounders know little of the practice of type-composition, and are fond of elaborating philosophical systems of proportion which look well on paper, but are productive of endless annoyance and loss of time in practice.

There is a natural desire to know something of the personality of those whose names are familiar. The readers of Typo will therefore be interested in the sketch of Mr Thomas MacKellar, which we give this month under the head of « Worthies of the Craft. » It is no fault of ours that we cannot give the proper authority for the article, which we have somewhat abridged. It is said to be from « the local paper » of Germantown, Pa., where Mr MacKellar resides. We hope our younger readers will study this narrative of the life of one of the foremost men who adorn the art of Printing. We need not enforce the lessons the history contains—they are plain enough—and are substantially the same as those to be gathered from the biography of Mr De Vinne in our February issue.

The Hawera Star objects to the grammar of the Wanganui Inspector of Schools, in writing: « Such people do not reflect how little support an inspector who failed a whole class for lack of intelligence in reading would get from committee, parents, and perhaps the board itself. » The Star does not go so far as to say that a school inspector who writes M.A. after his name is technically wrong, but it truly states that such a use of the word « failed » is inconvenient and confusing.

A description of the beautiful automatic spool-labelling machinery in use in American factories will be found on another page. After remarking that the large rooms once occupied by factory-girls are now filled with machines, the Inland Printer remarks:— « Poor girls, » thinks some one, « their occupation's gone! » True, but gone only to make way for new and better occupation for the same girls and more besides, in other departments of the mills. Such is the ultimate effect of every labor-saving improvement, cheapening production, increasing demand and enlarging instead of contracting the market for labor.