Typophile - typographical errors - Comments

The earliest full

Alessandro Segalini — Fri, 9 May 2008 14:11:16 -0700

The earliest full explanation of how to print was produced by Joseph Moxon in 1683. I believe it is still a highly readable and useful book. It also exists in several facsimile editions, most recently :
Moxon, Joseph. 1978, “Mechanick exercises on the whole art of printing (1683-4)” edited by Herbert Davis & Harry Carter ; Dover Publications, New York.
ISBN 048623617X

Perhaps these? Chapter VI of

Gus Winterbottom — Fri, 9 May 2008 14:04:11 -0700

Perhaps these?

Chapter VI of Dramatic Publication in England, 1580-1640.

Chapter I of Chapters on English printing, prosody, and pronunciation (1550-1700).

Chapter VII of A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898.

Chapter 1 of Theatre of the book, 1480-1880: print, text, and performance in Europe.

Chapter 5 of Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830.

A List of Books on the History and Art of Printing.

Also this snippet from page 3 of Shakespeare’s Editors and Commentators:

“In a letter to Nicholas Okes the printer, inserted at the end of Heywood’s ” Apology for Actors,” a treatise published in 1612, speaking of William Jaggard the writer observes, ” The infinite faults escaped in my booke of Britaines Troy by the negligence of the printer, as the misquotations, mistaking of syllables, misplacing half lines, coining of strange and never heard of words, these being without number, when I would have taken a particular account of the Errata, the printer answered me, hee
would not publish his owne disworkmanship, but rather let his owne fault lye upon the necke of the author.”

You have to love the term “disworkmanship.”

and sorry, didn’t complete

ryansdaughter — Fri, 9 May 2008 13:38:32 -0700

and sorry, didn’t complete last sentence.. the rising spaces were inevitably interword spaces which are more likely to be 3-pt wide by 8, 10, 11, 12-pt high ie rather fine narrow upright rectangle. I’m schematizing here...
Spaces wear up and rise up during printing (rarely in my print shop)....

I bet that I am not the only

ryansdaughter — Fri, 9 May 2008 13:30:41 -0700

I bet that I am not the only letterpress printer who is mouthing, whilst glaring at the
screen in utter disbelief — ’what the heck is that advice’ about printing from a stick... and black boxes...?

This is technical, in the sense that a practitioner could really explain it to you whereas
someone who knows nothing about it at all could not! One composes in a stick; I have yet to hear of anyone printing from it!

Upside down letters — tis’ obvious... the classic is the ’s’, followed by ’u’ abd ’n’...
and of course the expression ’mind your p’s and q’s’ may well derive from the ease with
which lackadaisical comps muddled the typecase next-door neighbours... we are talking about letters that are cast backwards... I could go on all day but I don’t think it would be necessary (try separating a figure 1 from a lower case l and from the upper case I... when they have been wrongly put back in the type case!)
Then there are small cap figures too....
The rising spaces occurred because the line was set too strong or too loose or if the forme was badly locked up... these spaces would be boxes if they were square em quad indents opening paragraphs or indeed the em spaces that used to follow full points in prose texts...

Voilà some light on the subject after the tarpaulin...

James Mosley’s blog on

eliason — Fri, 9 May 2008 13:02:52 -0700

James Mosley’s blog on fallen types might have some leads that would be useful.

Hello Connie, you can read

Alessandro Segalini — Fri, 9 May 2008 12:29:17 -0700

Hello Connie, you can read something about the figure of the prototypographer at www.bibliopolis.nl.

Not sure about sources, but

Don McCahill — Fri, 9 May 2008 12:28:47 -0700

Not sure about sources, but some errors I have heard of are letters upside down, like the ’e’, and space characters that rode too high on the stick, and resulted in a black box printing instead of a space. (And of course the wrong letter chosen from the case.)

Others here probably know more.

typographical errors

CBeane — Fri, 9 May 2008 11:29:17 -0700

I’m a newbie with an academic interest in early 17th century typesetting practices, particularly how certain typesetting errors could occur and how they would be detected/corrected. I would be grateful for some input on books to consult or Internet sources.