Some of Wikipedia’s listed synonyms for the slash are new to me: “oblique, diagonal, whack, separatrix, virgule, scratch comma, slant, or forward slash.” Have any of you called it a whack, a separatrix, or a scratch comma before?
Have any of you called it a whack, a separatrix, or a scratch comma before?
“Whack” is used in computer jargon. One might say “h t t p, colon, whack whack” to describe “http://”. Since the different directions are interchangeable in certain computer networking applications, a whack could also go the other way. “whack whack servername” is “\\SERVERNAME".
Some of Wikipedia’s listed synonyms for the slash are new to me: “oblique, diagonal, whack, separatrix, virgule, scratch comma, slant, or forward slash.” Have any of you called it a whack, a separatrix, or a scratch comma before?
Some of them may be made up. Do any of the terms you list have citations with verifiable references? If not, you can’t trust them. As a Wikipedian myself I know Wikipedia to be a crank magnet—-the most powerful crank magnet in the universe. While working on type-related articles there I discovered a lot of programmer-like geeks working on them as well. They consider themselves qualified to write on typography matters, which is absurd really, all things considered, and they have an annoying habit of introducing terms and jargon from the programming world. They justify it by saying that programmers use these terms for writing code.
If you guys see anything questionable or dubious in Wikipedia’s typography articles and it has no citation or reference, jump right in there and put this tag next to the suspect text:
{fact}
That generates a [citation needed] tag in the rendered article. You don’t need to be a registered Wikipedian to do it. Anyone can challenge what’s there. If the author(s) who put the unreferenced material in fail to come up with a valid reference within two months it is considered acceptable to remove the unsourced material.
Some people I work with call a slash a “forward slash”, but it’s hard to see the point when “slash” makes perfect sense contrasted with “backslash”.
Some people I work with call a slash a “forward slash”, but it’s hard to see the point when “slash” makes perfect sense contrasted with “backslash”.
I suspect these are mostly Windows users who are used to using the backslash for path names and therefore are prone to use it instead of a slash in URLs out of habit. Calling it a forward slash helps to make it clearer for them (although I sometimes hear people on the radio mistakenly saying “backslash” when reciting a URL). “Forward slash” sounds odd mainly to non-Windows users who don’t use the backslash so much.
One time on the talk page for Wikipedia:font (typeface), a user asked if the origin story for “upper case” and “lower case” was a lot of hokum somebody made up. This guy said something like, “That sounds like an urban myth, as if typesetters in metal days actually had an upper case and a lower case. Glad to meet you, I’m Lincoln’s grandfather.”
I assured the person the origin story is true—-to the best of our knowledge.
Mark—-yes, in all likelihood you are right about “backslash”.
What about using the term “cut”? I think that is right in there with “leading”.
Interesting you should bring that up: I reject terms like “foundry” and make a point of not using that word, saying “font maker” or “type designer” instead. Yet I don’t think twice about calling line height “leading”. “Cut” will probably be around forever, no matter what medium font makers use to draw type outlines with. Cut is almost synonymous with line and outline.
They (printers) actually did have separate upper (for the majuscule) and lower cases (for the minuscule). They still physically exist. I have a couple of them. The terms are post the development of printing and did not exist prior.
...but is “\SERVERNAME” actually “back-whack back-whack servername”?
Yeah, I think I initially forgot to “whack” (escape) one of my whacks. I fixed (whacked?) it pretty quickly, which I probably shouldn’t have done, because you immediately quoted it.
“They consider themselves qualified to write on typography matters, which is absurd really, all things considered, and they have an annoying habit of introducing terms and jargon from the programming world. They justify it by saying that programmers use these terms for writing code.”
Well, isn’t that still typography? Granted, anything written in a resource like wikipedia should be verified, but it seems that one of the great things about wikipedia is it’s contemporary vernacular. But I do see your point as well. Perhaps there’s a need for articles to have a section on ’contemporary variations’ or the like.
FYI, this is a great thread!
Mark: I’m ashamed...even having worked at a letterpress shop, I’ve never heard of Electrotype or Stereotype...what are those?
Furniture - Usually wood, but could be metal pieces which fill in the chase (which see) of a letterpress printer; held tightly in place by quoins (which see). This “word of art” is found in other industries, where it can mean any wooden component part of the whole. For example, a wooden gunstock is the gun’s furniture.
Copy-fitting
Fist - Guess: a group of Linotype or Intertype slugs lifted from the machine’s output tray and taken (in one’s fisted hand, from which comes this “word of art”) to a composing station, usually passing a Hammond cutoff saw first to adjust the length as required by the job.
Slug - A cast line of Linotype or Intertype type
Logotype
Calendar figures
Quad - Mechanism on a Linotype or Intertype which mechanically fills in the line; can be quad left, quad center or quad right, as set on the mechanism’s control; it is an add-on accessory for most older machines, say, a Model 15, and may be standard on later machines; often found on machines installed in newspapers.
Mortise - Guess: Related to furniture, but I can’t remember how.
Quoin & quoin key - Rectangular (one piece) or wedge-shaped (two piece) device which tightens the furniture (which see) in the chase; once so tightened, the chase may be safely moved from the composing station and installed in the letterpress printer. Quoins are operated by a quoin key.
Electrotype
Stereotype
(Actually, modern letterpress printers will know a lot of these.)
A quad is a standard space, measured in ems or ens, such as an em quad or en quad. When you say “quad left” or “quad right” it just means “fill out the line with quads,” pushing the line to the left or right.
A mortise is a border or illustration cut with a hole in it in which to place type.
A quoin key is the thing you use to tighten a quoin.
Well, isn’t that still typography? Granted, anything written in a resource like wikipedia should be verified, but it seems that one of the great things about wikipedia is it’s contemporary vernacular. But I do see your point as well. Perhaps there’s a need for articles to have a section on ’contemporary variations’ or the like.
The accepted solution to most Wikipedia content disputes is, or has been, to join the Inclusionist Church of Wikipedia, which has the largest number of followers. To achieve a neutral point of view, multiple authors working on a single article include all points of view established as valid, with criteria for notability and verification. Readers are left to decide the relevance of the various points of view for themselves.
The NPOV requirement is the reason why, for example, Wikipedia’s main type history article is titled History of Western Typography: an Asian contributor pointed out my initial breach of NPOV, concensus was established at the Village Pump, and the title was changed.
You are quite right in pointing to the contemporary nature of the newer terms. Wikipedia has always been the bleeding edge in Encyclopedestrianization. The reality of Encyclopedestrianization has its shock value for everyone.
As in, if one steps out of the press room and says “... I left a hickey on this page.” more people will think he is oddly perverse than will think he needs to keep the keep the dust down in the press room. [|:¬)
(not strictly a type word admittedly)
- Out of curiosity... The skills of the first gunsmiths were borrowed from medieval locksmiths. Hence the term, lock stock and barrel, which originally referred to parts on a lock (and had nothing to do with the wooden parts or the long metal tube the bullet comes out of). Are there similar terms transferred from from trades the printing industry would have borrowed from?
“A quad is a standard space, measured in ems or ens, such as an em quad or en quad. When you say ’quad left’ or ’quad right’ it just means ’fill out the line with quads,’ pushing the line to the left or right.”
When used as a noun, yes.
When used as a verb on a linecaster (Linotype and Intertype, and possibly also on a Monotype, although I’ve never operated a Monotype typecaster), or with specific reference to a quadder as a noun, it refers to the mechanism or the operation thereof, which is attached as an accessory to, or is built into the linecaster, and which effects quadding, left, right or center, without the use of true quads (em or en, or whatever, as matrices) combined with adjustable spacebars.
“They (printers) actually did have separate upper (for the majuscule) and lower cases (for the minuscule). They still physically exist. I have a couple of them. The terms are post the development of printing and did not exist prior.”
Historically, where do minuscule and majuscule fit in, with specific respect to the California Job Case?
I learned to set type by hand, in the 1950s, from a California Job Case, and I cannot recall encountering a different case.
Set the body in briever, Century, no rag, with a 2-point lead. Make sure to set your gauge pins for a demy, and pack the platen tight with tympan. Stock up on quads in case you run out of furniture, and use the newer quoins for lockup! :)
The term “virgule” goes way back before typesetting, back to the mediæval era. OED (2nd edn. 1989) says:
“1. A thin sloping or upright line (/, |) occurring in mediæval MSS. as a mark for the cæsura or as a punctuation-mark (frequently with the same value as the modern comma). Now also in more general use with various functions (see quots.). Cf. SLASH n.¹ 5”
“Solidus” is used by Unicode, and was metaphorically transferred from the symbol separating shillings from pence, since “shilling” is an equivalent to “solidus” which was the Roman gold coin worth about 25 denarii (which itself is the source of “d.” for pence). OED gives this as sense 2:
“2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6, in writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a shilling-mark. Also attrib. Cf. OBLIQUE n. 5.”
“Oblique” has its first citation in the OED (sense 4) at 1785, although the first citation referring specifically to the typographic sense is from 1965: “1965 W. S. ALLEN Vox Latina 9 Phonemic symbols..are conventionally set between obliques, e.g. /t/.”
“Scratch comma” is attested in the OED under sense V.12.b of SCRATCH: “scratch-comma, a diagonal stroke used by some early printers in place of the comma”
On the other hand, the OED doesn’t have a lemma for “seperatrix”, which strikes me as suspect anyway.
Feel free to deposit this info in the Wikipedia article. I can’t be bothered at the moment.
(How I wish that either Unicode or HTML supported proper small caps.)
James, do you mean sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘɪᴛᴀʟs ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇsᴇ? Unicode explicitly won’t make them a proper ‘case’ and only includes those with other linguistic uses. When I’ve wanted to fake small-caps with Unicode I used the list below. Bracketed characters are from other scripts than Latin, and their applicability is font-dependent; I don’t recall what I intended the other notation to mean: Aaᴀ Bbʙ[в] Ccᴄ[с](c) Ddᴅ Eeᴇ Ff* Ggɢ Hhʜ[н] Iiɪ Jjᴊ Kkᴋ[к][ĸ] Llʟ Mmᴍ[м] Nnɴ Ooᴏ[о](o) Ppᴘ Qq* Rrʀ Ss[ѕ](s) Ttᴛ[т] Uuᴜ Vvᴠ[ѵ](v*) Wwᴡ[ѡ](w*) Xx[х](x*) Yyʏ Zzᴢ(z*) Ððᴆ Þþ Œœɶ Ӕӕᴁ
This is, of course quite an unwarranted “
They were methods of making single-piece printing plates from locked-up page galleys, mainly for the high-speed presses used by newspapers.
new
Mark Simonson
28.Dec.2007 8.18am
Mark Simonson’s picture
Also: Electrotype was used by pirates to copy fonts.
. . . . .
I would like to avoid niceties of language. Stereotypes (accredited to Firmin Didot) were used for newspapers, publishers and for other reasons, magazines, job printing, not to mention national advertising campaigns, when do I stop? If not here?
“Electro-deposited matrices” were not only used by pirates but also by legitimates foundries maintaining their own fount matrix libraries, and, for example, producing legitimate copies for their clients. Common in the sorts department of the Lanston Monotype Machine foundry.
I can see the difference. Can you?
I could provide more details on Stereotypes, and Electroplates, not mentioned hear as I can not comprehend a need to know?
Russel, the passel of fonts you see is the browser looking for whichever font it can find that has the Unicode small-caps characters—and not finding it in any one font. Fun, no?
—Joel
It seems those spurious small caps are even browser sensitive even when the right fonts are installed. It looks almost just fine for me in Safari apart from some slight weight differences but totally messed up in Seamonkey.
Each browser uses its own nonstandard methods of finding characters that aren’t present in the current font. Hence the different behaviors even on the same operating system with the same fonts.
Fridays, we would “Throw in” at the letterpress shop. We would loosen the quoins, re-stock the furniture and “throw in” or dump the type out and put it all back in the California Job Cases.
I swept the floors while the journeymen differentiated between d’s, p’s, b’s and q’s.
When spacing material rises in a forme being printed, black marks show between words or between lines. They are called “workups”.
In books, several zeroes were often set to indicate a page number to be inserted later, after the whole book was paginated, as “See page 000.” These zeroes were called “deadwood” or “bogus.”
I can offer more, including one that some may find offensive. but I’m just back at the desk after two weeks off work [and blessedly away from computers] and there are piles of stuff to tend to. So let me get back to this in a day or so.
OK. Here’s the possibly offensive one. Sometimes “deadwood” was set with sorts that were type high, but that had no image on them. They were rectangles that printed black. And they were very easy for proofreaders and comps to spot.
In many hot-metal shops, even unto the 1980s, the term for them was “niggerhead.” In fact, that is the only term I ever heard for them. & I was pretty startled.
****************
Let me also clarify “deadwood”. That term is used not only for numerical placeholders. Any matter set to indicate where a compositor is to insert other sorts is known as “deadwood.” Or “bogus.” I worked at a Monotype shop where we had to insert Greek, Cyrillic, and Chinese by hand. Keyboard operators set deadwood to the approximately correct width and we comps would insert the non-Latin.
****************
“Workups” were pushed down with special awls known in the type and printing trades as “bodkins.” Or sometimes with a “palm rule.” I wish I still had a set of those.
Looking forward to hearing about the offensive and arcane printing terms!
Do you want me to get started on German terms? For all these weird and wonderful terms in English there are those in all the other languages. I only had to learn them in two languages, and that was hard enough.
Well, the most frequently quoted surely are ‘Hurenkind’ [child of a bitch] for ‘widow’ and ‘Schusterjunge’ [cobbler boy] for ‘orphan’ …
A voluminous printed matter free of errors – without having made a single correction – is a ‘Jungfrau(enwunder)’ [‘virgin (miracle)’ – yes, printers & typesetters are/were predominantly male], ‘Leading’ is called ‘Durchschuss’ [‘shot right through’?], a ‘Zwiebelfisch’ [onion fish] is a letter accidentally set in a different font (or a letter put in the wrong case), and an upside-down metal letter (so that the cone’s bottom leaves its print) is a ‘Fliegenkopf’ [fly’s head].
There are a lot more; and yes, I’d like to learn about some more from Erik’s experienced vocabulary, too – especially if they aren’t included in this Wikipedia list.
Zwiebelfisch [onion fish] is a letter accidentally set in a different font (or a letter put in the wrong case)
No, a letter in the wrong case is just a Fisch (fish). A “verfischter Kasten” is a case full of wrong fonts. Sounds like a kosher sandwich, but was more often than not left to the apprentices (like me) to clean up. Which entailed setting all the type from the case into the composing stick to sort good from bad. And then “dissing” it back, as we called that in London.
Aha, okay. Thanks for clarifying!
Btw, for those who think ‘Zwiebelfische’ are limited to the old metal days: Try inserting a ďīăċŗĩťıč that isn’t included in Georgia …
@eliason: Some of Wikipedia’s listed synonyms for the slash are new to me: “oblique, diagonal, whack, separatrix, virgule, scratch comma, slant, or forward slash.” Have any of you called it a whack, a separatrix, or a scratch comma before?
@aluminium: Well, isn’t that still typography? ...Perhaps there’s a need for articles to have a section on ’contemporary variations’ or the like.
I question whether what programmers do can be considered, or defined, as typography. Writing code is a form of typesetting in the sense that letters are set, but is it really typesetting or typography? I submit that it is not, because the goal of programming is not to set type in an aesthetically pleasing and coherent manner, but to write code to control the functions of a computer. Two different activites or professions are equated and conflated.
The definition of typography is being broadened to include things which are not typographic, but linguistic or semantic. Certain tasks in programming are being conflated with typography tasks.
So if the inclusionist philosophy wins in this absurd encyclopedestrianization of everything, and terms used by programmers must be included in typography articles because they are “contemporary vernacular”, the sensible thing to do is make it clear what came from where, distinguish between typography and “codesetting”. That would be a useful word for it. When composing you are typesetting, when writing code you are codesetting.
j a m e s
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27.Dec.2007 12.26pm
Please be sharing the definition of twip and tittle!
27.Dec.2007 1.05pm
A tittle is the dot over an i or j... not sure what a twip is.
27.Dec.2007 1.06pm
Twip and tittle.
27.Dec.2007 1.21pm
Nut (en space) and mutton (em space).
27.Dec.2007 1.46pm
I love to use octothorp when others might say “pound” or “hash”.
27.Dec.2007 2.04pm
pi
27.Dec.2007 2.24pm
Some of Wikipedia’s listed synonyms for the slash are new to me: “oblique, diagonal, whack, separatrix, virgule, scratch comma, slant, or forward slash.” Have any of you called it a whack, a separatrix, or a scratch comma before?
27.Dec.2007 2.27pm
Well, there is “pig” and “monkey” (printers & typesetters, respectively).
All sorts of interesting terms in The Printer’s Vocabulary by Charles Thomas Jacobi (London, Chiswick Press, 1881).
And for em-space, along with mutton are molly and mary . . .
Pilcrow for the paragraph symbol . . .
Don’t get me started on type terms. Been there & got the hat.
27.Dec.2007 3.07pm
“Eroteme” is a long-forgotten name for the question mark.
27.Dec.2007 4.05pm
Have any of you called it a whack, a separatrix, or a scratch comma before?
“Whack” is used in computer jargon. One might say “h t t p, colon, whack whack” to describe “http://”. Since the different directions are interchangeable in certain computer networking applications, a whack could also go the other way. “whack whack servername” is “\\SERVERNAME".
27.Dec.2007 4.29pm
...but is “\SERVERNAME” actually “back-whack back-whack servername”?
27.Dec.2007 6.15pm
Some of Wikipedia’s listed synonyms for the slash are new to me: “oblique, diagonal, whack, separatrix, virgule, scratch comma, slant, or forward slash.” Have any of you called it a whack, a separatrix, or a scratch comma before?
Some of them may be made up. Do any of the terms you list have citations with verifiable references? If not, you can’t trust them. As a Wikipedian myself I know Wikipedia to be a crank magnet—-the most powerful crank magnet in the universe. While working on type-related articles there I discovered a lot of programmer-like geeks working on them as well. They consider themselves qualified to write on typography matters, which is absurd really, all things considered, and they have an annoying habit of introducing terms and jargon from the programming world. They justify it by saying that programmers use these terms for writing code.
If you guys see anything questionable or dubious in Wikipedia’s typography articles and it has no citation or reference, jump right in there and put this tag next to the suspect text:
{fact}
That generates a [citation needed] tag in the rendered article. You don’t need to be a registered Wikipedian to do it. Anyone can challenge what’s there. If the author(s) who put the unreferenced material in fail to come up with a valid reference within two months it is considered acceptable to remove the unsourced material.
Some people I work with call a slash a “forward slash”, but it’s hard to see the point when “slash” makes perfect sense contrasted with “backslash”.
j a m e s
27.Dec.2007 7.20pm
Some people I work with call a slash a “forward slash”, but it’s hard to see the point when “slash” makes perfect sense contrasted with “backslash”.
I suspect these are mostly Windows users who are used to using the backslash for path names and therefore are prone to use it instead of a slash in URLs out of habit. Calling it a forward slash helps to make it clearer for them (although I sometimes hear people on the radio mistakenly saying “backslash” when reciting a URL). “Forward slash” sounds odd mainly to non-Windows users who don’t use the backslash so much.
27.Dec.2007 7.48pm
What about using the term “cut”? I think that is right in there with “leading”.
27.Dec.2007 7.53pm
upper & lower case - the origins of the “case” are lost on pretty much everyone.
27.Dec.2007 8.13pm
One time on the talk page for Wikipedia:font (typeface), a user asked if the origin story for “upper case” and “lower case” was a lot of hokum somebody made up. This guy said something like, “That sounds like an urban myth, as if typesetters in metal days actually had an upper case and a lower case. Glad to meet you, I’m Lincoln’s grandfather.”
I assured the person the origin story is true—-to the best of our knowledge.
Mark—-yes, in all likelihood you are right about “backslash”.
What about using the term “cut”? I think that is right in there with “leading”.
Interesting you should bring that up: I reject terms like “foundry” and make a point of not using that word, saying “font maker” or “type designer” instead. Yet I don’t think twice about calling line height “leading”. “Cut” will probably be around forever, no matter what medium font makers use to draw type outlines with. Cut is almost synonymous with line and outline.
j a m e s
27.Dec.2007 8.26pm
Im all out of sorts
27.Dec.2007 8.42pm
They (printers) actually did have separate upper (for the majuscule) and lower cases (for the minuscule). They still physically exist. I have a couple of them. The terms are post the development of printing and did not exist prior.
Gerald
27.Dec.2007 9.41pm
They (printers) actually did have separate upper (for the majuscule) and lower cases (for the minuscule).
As they say on the Internet, “Pics! or it didn’t happen.”
27.Dec.2007 9.43pm
hickey
-=®=-
27.Dec.2007 9.49pm
As they say on the Internet, “Pics! or it didn’t happen.”
Well, then, “they” lose.
Gerald
27.Dec.2007 9.50pm
...but is “\SERVERNAME” actually “back-whack back-whack servername”?
Yeah, I think I initially forgot to “whack” (escape) one of my whacks. I fixed (whacked?) it pretty quickly, which I probably shouldn’t have done, because you immediately quoted it.
28.Dec.2007 7.18am
Furniture
Copy-fitting
Fist
Slug
Logotype
Calendar figures
Quad
Mortise
Quoin & quoin key
Electrotype
Stereotype
(Actually, modern letterpress printers will know a lot of these.)
28.Dec.2007 7.30am
“obscure. Got any others?”
Arkle, Bolleri, Cantra, Dezk, Entony, Frencker, Grapper, Honley, Instop, Juster, Kromni, Lestic, Marcorhym, Nester, Omnifont, Panose, Quark, Rult, Serien, Tanstraam, Unitype, Vallétione, Waskgrap, Xerox, Yuristic and Zoop.
Cheers!
28.Dec.2007 8.09am
“They consider themselves qualified to write on typography matters, which is absurd really, all things considered, and they have an annoying habit of introducing terms and jargon from the programming world. They justify it by saying that programmers use these terms for writing code.”
Well, isn’t that still typography? Granted, anything written in a resource like wikipedia should be verified, but it seems that one of the great things about wikipedia is it’s contemporary vernacular. But I do see your point as well. Perhaps there’s a need for articles to have a section on ’contemporary variations’ or the like.
FYI, this is a great thread!
Mark: I’m ashamed...even having worked at a letterpress shop, I’ve never heard of Electrotype or Stereotype...what are those?
Also, I’ve always love the term ’Quoin’.
28.Dec.2007 8.15am
Electrotype or Stereotype...what are those?
They were methods of making single-piece printing plates from locked-up page galleys, mainly for the high-speed presses used by newspapers.
28.Dec.2007 8.18am
Also: Electrotype was used by pirates to copy fonts.
28.Dec.2007 8.43am
Hickey as an archaic example? Hickies still happen on press.
28.Dec.2007 10.47am
Furniture - Usually wood, but could be metal pieces which fill in the chase (which see) of a letterpress printer; held tightly in place by quoins (which see). This “word of art” is found in other industries, where it can mean any wooden component part of the whole. For example, a wooden gunstock is the gun’s furniture.
Copy-fitting
Fist - Guess: a group of Linotype or Intertype slugs lifted from the machine’s output tray and taken (in one’s fisted hand, from which comes this “word of art”) to a composing station, usually passing a Hammond cutoff saw first to adjust the length as required by the job.
Slug - A cast line of Linotype or Intertype type
Logotype
Calendar figures
Quad - Mechanism on a Linotype or Intertype which mechanically fills in the line; can be quad left, quad center or quad right, as set on the mechanism’s control; it is an add-on accessory for most older machines, say, a Model 15, and may be standard on later machines; often found on machines installed in newspapers.
Mortise - Guess: Related to furniture, but I can’t remember how.
Quoin & quoin key - Rectangular (one piece) or wedge-shaped (two piece) device which tightens the furniture (which see) in the chase; once so tightened, the chase may be safely moved from the composing station and installed in the letterpress printer. Quoins are operated by a quoin key.
Electrotype
Stereotype
(Actually, modern letterpress printers will know a lot of these.)
28.Dec.2007 11.12am
Furniture is any spacing material.
A fist is one of those pointing hand dingbats.
A slug is also just a piece of type.
A quad is a standard space, measured in ems or ens, such as an em quad or en quad. When you say “quad left” or “quad right” it just means “fill out the line with quads,” pushing the line to the left or right.
A mortise is a border or illustration cut with a hole in it in which to place type.
A quoin key is the thing you use to tighten a quoin.
28.Dec.2007 2.29pm
Well, isn’t that still typography? Granted, anything written in a resource like wikipedia should be verified, but it seems that one of the great things about wikipedia is it’s contemporary vernacular. But I do see your point as well. Perhaps there’s a need for articles to have a section on ’contemporary variations’ or the like.
The accepted solution to most Wikipedia content disputes is, or has been, to join the Inclusionist Church of Wikipedia, which has the largest number of followers. To achieve a neutral point of view, multiple authors working on a single article include all points of view established as valid, with criteria for notability and verification. Readers are left to decide the relevance of the various points of view for themselves.
The NPOV requirement is the reason why, for example, Wikipedia’s main type history article is titled History of Western Typography: an Asian contributor pointed out my initial breach of NPOV, concensus was established at the Village Pump, and the title was changed.
You are quite right in pointing to the contemporary nature of the newer terms. Wikipedia has always been the bleeding edge in Encyclopedestrianization. The reality of Encyclopedestrianization has its shock value for everyone.
j a m e s
28.Dec.2007 2.50pm
Arcane, Miss Tiffany. Arcane. :o)
As in, if one steps out of the press room and says “... I left a hickey on this page.” more people will think he is oddly perverse than will think he needs to keep the keep the dust down in the press room. [|:¬)
(not strictly a type word admittedly)
- Out of curiosity... The skills of the first gunsmiths were borrowed from medieval locksmiths. Hence the term, lock stock and barrel, which originally referred to parts on a lock (and had nothing to do with the wooden parts or the long metal tube the bullet comes out of). Are there similar terms transferred from from trades the printing industry would have borrowed from?
-=®=-
28.Dec.2007 4.31pm
“A quad is a standard space, measured in ems or ens, such as an em quad or en quad. When you say ’quad left’ or ’quad right’ it just means ’fill out the line with quads,’ pushing the line to the left or right.”
When used as a noun, yes.
When used as a verb on a linecaster (Linotype and Intertype, and possibly also on a Monotype, although I’ve never operated a Monotype typecaster), or with specific reference to a quadder as a noun, it refers to the mechanism or the operation thereof, which is attached as an accessory to, or is built into the linecaster, and which effects quadding, left, right or center, without the use of true quads (em or en, or whatever, as matrices) combined with adjustable spacebars.
28.Dec.2007 4.36pm
“They (printers) actually did have separate upper (for the majuscule) and lower cases (for the minuscule). They still physically exist. I have a couple of them. The terms are post the development of printing and did not exist prior.”
Historically, where do minuscule and majuscule fit in, with specific respect to the California Job Case?
I learned to set type by hand, in the 1950s, from a California Job Case, and I cannot recall encountering a different case.
28.Dec.2007 5.38pm
Set the body in briever, Century, no rag, with a 2-point lead. Make sure to set your gauge pins for a demy, and pack the platen tight with tympan. Stock up on quads in case you run out of furniture, and use the newer quoins for lockup! :)
Personal Art and Design Portal of Ivan Gulkov
www.ivangdesign.com
28.Dec.2007 5.48pm
The term “virgule” goes way back before typesetting, back to the mediæval era. OED (2nd edn. 1989) says:
“1. A thin sloping or upright line (/, |) occurring in mediæval MSS. as a mark for the cæsura or as a punctuation-mark (frequently with the same value as the modern comma). Now also in more general use with various functions (see quots.). Cf. SLASH n.¹ 5”
“Solidus” is used by Unicode, and was metaphorically transferred from the symbol separating shillings from pence, since “shilling” is an equivalent to “solidus” which was the Roman gold coin worth about 25 denarii (which itself is the source of “d.” for pence). OED gives this as sense 2:
“2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6, in writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a shilling-mark. Also attrib. Cf. OBLIQUE n. 5.”
“Oblique” has its first citation in the OED (sense 4) at 1785, although the first citation referring specifically to the typographic sense is from 1965: “1965 W. S. ALLEN Vox Latina 9 Phonemic symbols..are conventionally set between obliques, e.g. /t/.”
“Scratch comma” is attested in the OED under sense V.12.b of SCRATCH: “scratch-comma, a diagonal stroke used by some early printers in place of the comma”
On the other hand, the OED doesn’t have a lemma for “seperatrix”, which strikes me as suspect anyway.
Feel free to deposit this info in the Wikipedia article. I can’t be bothered at the moment.
(How I wish that either Unicode or HTML supported proper small caps.)
28.Dec.2007 7.02pm
Arcane. Oh dear. Ok well I’ll totally agree with hickey then. Sorry for some reason I read archaic. Great thread. It all makes sense now. :^D
29.Dec.2007 1.31pm
I’ve heard just “bang” used in place of “interrobang,” and I’ve always wanted to have “separatrix” revived. ;-) It sounds deliciously fun....
29.Dec.2007 2.52pm
I’ve heard just “bang” used in place of “interrobang,”
I think the “bang” is just the exclamation-mark part of an “interrobang.”
29.Dec.2007 3.34pm
Yes, bang = exclamation point (or exclamation mark)
29.Dec.2007 7.36pm
And, as I recall, used by the late Victor Borge in his amazing performance of punctuation.... ;-)
30.Dec.2007 8.02am
Borge’s bang was more like “ppt-fsssss!”
30.Dec.2007 12.06pm
James, do you mean sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘɪᴛᴀʟs ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇsᴇ? Unicode explicitly won’t make them a proper ‘case’ and only includes those with other linguistic uses. When I’ve wanted to fake small-caps with Unicode I used the list below. Bracketed characters are from other scripts than Latin, and their applicability is font-dependent; I don’t recall what I intended the other notation to mean:
Aaᴀ Bbʙ[в] Ccᴄ[с](c) Ddᴅ Eeᴇ Ff* Ggɢ Hhʜ[н] Iiɪ Jjᴊ Kkᴋ[к][ĸ] Llʟ Mmᴍ[м] Nnɴ Ooᴏ[о](o) Ppᴘ Qq* Rrʀ Ss[ѕ](s) Ttᴛ[т] Uuᴜ Vvᴠ[ѵ](v*) Wwᴡ[ѡ](w*) Xx[х](x*) Yyʏ Zzᴢ(z*) Ððᴆ Þþ Œœɶ ӔӕᴁThis is, of course quite an unwarranted “
30.Dec.2007 4.23pm
Ick.
As you can see, lacking proper support for small caps you end up with typographic disaster.
30.Dec.2007 4.41pm
sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘɪᴛᴀʟs ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇsᴇ?
Indeed. But how do you do that? I copied & pasted it and there were about half a dozen different fonts there
-=®=-
30.Dec.2007 10.14pm
Electrotype or Stereotype...what are those?
They were methods of making single-piece printing plates from locked-up page galleys, mainly for the high-speed presses used by newspapers.
new
Mark Simonson
28.Dec.2007 8.18am
Mark Simonson’s picture
Also: Electrotype was used by pirates to copy fonts.
. . . . .
I would like to avoid niceties of language. Stereotypes (accredited to Firmin Didot) were used for newspapers, publishers and for other reasons, magazines, job printing, not to mention national advertising campaigns, when do I stop? If not here?
“Electro-deposited matrices” were not only used by pirates but also by legitimates foundries maintaining their own fount matrix libraries, and, for example, producing legitimate copies for their clients. Common in the sorts department of the Lanston Monotype Machine foundry.
I can see the difference. Can you?
I could provide more details on Stereotypes, and Electroplates, not mentioned hear as I can not comprehend a need to know?
Good night folks.
Giampa
30.Dec.2007 11.05pm
Russel, the passel of fonts you see is the browser looking for whichever font it can find that has the Unicode small-caps characters—and not finding it in any one font. Fun, no?
—Joel
31.Dec.2007 8.01am
I can see the difference. Can you?
Thanks for the clarification/correction, Gerald. I’m sure you know a lot more about these techniques than I do.
31.Dec.2007 8.09am
It seems those spurious small caps are even browser sensitive even when the right fonts are installed. It looks almost just fine for me in Safari apart from some slight weight differences but totally messed up in Seamonkey.
31.Dec.2007 2.52pm
Each browser uses its own nonstandard methods of finding characters that aren’t present in the current font. Hence the different behaviors even on the same operating system with the same fonts.
31.Dec.2007 5.02pm
Fridays, we would “Throw in” at the letterpress shop. We would loosen the quoins, re-stock the furniture and “throw in” or dump the type out and put it all back in the California Job Cases.
I swept the floors while the journeymen differentiated between d’s, p’s, b’s and q’s.
3.Jan.2008 6.53am
Exclamation points were called “screamers”.
Question marks were called “queries”.
Thin strips of wood spacing are “reglets”.
When spacing material rises in a forme being printed, black marks show between words or between lines. They are called “workups”.
In books, several zeroes were often set to indicate a page number to be inserted later, after the whole book was paginated, as “See page 000.” These zeroes were called “deadwood” or “bogus.”
I can offer more, including one that some may find offensive. but I’m just back at the desk after two weeks off work [and blessedly away from computers] and there are piles of stuff to tend to. So let me get back to this in a day or so.
H N Y to you all.
powers
3.Jan.2008 12.01pm
Oh...way to keep us hanging! Looking forward to hearing about the offensive and arcane printing terms!
3.Jan.2008 3.34pm
How the small caps above rendered on IE6.
-=®=-
3.Jan.2008 3.38pm
IE7 at least renders em & en spaces correctly. IE6 can’t get anything right!
—Joel
3.Jan.2008 8.18pm
OK. Here’s the possibly offensive one. Sometimes “deadwood” was set with sorts that were type high, but that had no image on them. They were rectangles that printed black. And they were very easy for proofreaders and comps to spot.
In many hot-metal shops, even unto the 1980s, the term for them was “niggerhead.” In fact, that is the only term I ever heard for them. & I was pretty startled.
****************
Let me also clarify “deadwood”. That term is used not only for numerical placeholders. Any matter set to indicate where a compositor is to insert other sorts is known as “deadwood.” Or “bogus.” I worked at a Monotype shop where we had to insert Greek, Cyrillic, and Chinese by hand. Keyboard operators set deadwood to the approximately correct width and we comps would insert the non-Latin.
****************
“Workups” were pushed down with special awls known in the type and printing trades as “bodkins.” Or sometimes with a “palm rule.” I wish I still had a set of those.
That’s it for tonight. Gotta go shovel snow.
powers
3.Jan.2008 8.52pm
[i]“Twip” and “tittle” both strike me as particularly obscure. Got any others?[/i]
Now I’m just itchin’ for the chance to say “that tittle needs to be nipped a twip”.
3.Jan.2008 9.17pm
Looking forward to hearing about the offensive and arcane printing terms!
Do you want me to get started on German terms? For all these weird and wonderful terms in English there are those in all the other languages. I only had to learn them in two languages, and that was hard enough.
4.Jan.2008 6.44am
German terms would be great
4.Jan.2008 8.22am
> Exclamation points were called “screamers”.
Place I worked at years back called them a “bang”.
4.Jan.2008 9.41am
German terms would be great
Well, the most frequently quoted surely are ‘Hurenkind’ [child of a bitch] for ‘widow’ and ‘Schusterjunge’ [cobbler boy] for ‘orphan’ …
A voluminous printed matter free of errors – without having made a single correction – is a ‘Jungfrau(enwunder)’ [‘virgin (miracle)’ – yes, printers & typesetters are/were predominantly male], ‘Leading’ is called ‘Durchschuss’ [‘shot right through’?], a ‘Zwiebelfisch’ [onion fish] is a letter accidentally set in a different font (or a letter put in the wrong case), and an upside-down metal letter (so that the cone’s bottom leaves its print) is a ‘Fliegenkopf’ [fly’s head].
There are a lot more; and yes, I’d like to learn about some more from Erik’s experienced vocabulary, too – especially if they aren’t included in this Wikipedia list.
This map, the ‘Typographiae Imperii Accurata Tabula’, is packed with type and printing terms, a lot of them ‘arcane’, most of them in German.
Made by Linotype in 1967, found on Robert Michael’s Flickr pages.
4.Jan.2008 11.23pm
Zwiebelfisch [onion fish] is a letter accidentally set in a different font (or a letter put in the wrong case)
No, a letter in the wrong case is just a Fisch (fish). A “verfischter Kasten” is a case full of wrong fonts. Sounds like a kosher sandwich, but was more often than not left to the apprentices (like me) to clean up. Which entailed setting all the type from the case into the composing stick to sort good from bad. And then “dissing” it back, as we called that in London.
5.Jan.2008 11.54am
Aha, okay. Thanks for clarifying!
Btw, for those who think ‘Zwiebelfische’ are limited to the old metal days: Try inserting a ďīăċŗĩťıč that isn’t included in Georgia …
5.Jan.2008 12.15pm
@eliason: Some of Wikipedia’s listed synonyms for the slash are new to me: “oblique, diagonal, whack, separatrix, virgule, scratch comma, slant, or forward slash.” Have any of you called it a whack, a separatrix, or a scratch comma before?
@aluminium: Well, isn’t that still typography? ...Perhaps there’s a need for articles to have a section on ’contemporary variations’ or the like.
I question whether what programmers do can be considered, or defined, as typography. Writing code is a form of typesetting in the sense that letters are set, but is it really typesetting or typography? I submit that it is not, because the goal of programming is not to set type in an aesthetically pleasing and coherent manner, but to write code to control the functions of a computer. Two different activites or professions are equated and conflated.
The definition of typography is being broadened to include things which are not typographic, but linguistic or semantic. Certain tasks in programming are being conflated with typography tasks.
So if the inclusionist philosophy wins in this absurd encyclopedestrianization of everything, and terms used by programmers must be included in typography articles because they are “contemporary vernacular”, the sensible thing to do is make it clear what came from where, distinguish between typography and “codesetting”. That would be a useful word for it. When composing you are typesetting, when writing code you are codesetting.
j a m e s