Volume 182402

Typographia: or the printers' instructor, including an account of the origin of printing. With biographical notices of the printers of England, from Caxton to the close of the sixteenth century: a series of ancient and modern alphabets, and Domesday characters: together with an elucidation of every subject connected with the art / By J. Johnson, printer.

  • John Johnson
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Typographia: or the printers' instructor, including an account of the origin of printing. With biographical notices of the printers of England, from Caxton to the close of the sixteenth century: a series of ancient and modern alphabets, and Domesday characters: together with an elucidation of every subject connected with the art / By J. Johnson, printer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    95/692 (page 75)
    NAMES OF LETTER, AND THEIR BEARINGS TO EACH OTHER. CHAP. V. | | _ Havine already treated upon the properties and shapes of types, and of all the sorts contained in a complete fount of letter, with some observations on the use and proper application of them; together with the inconveniences to which both the type- | founders and printers are daily exposed (particu- larly the latter) from the present, and now vastly encreasing, irregular practise of casting type, we are fully persuaded, that this growing evil cannot be too strongly reprobated by every lover of the art, whose chaste eye‘is perpetually offended, when glancing on a page, by some glaring defect or other ; particularly in the mixture of type, which, though of the same body, is widely different in the face, as well as being sometimes too high to paper, and at other times too low; either of which defects are equally bad. For these improprieties, from which | _we firmly believe that scarce any work is exempt, both parties are highly culpable ; and we sincerely | wish, for our own sakes as well as that of our patrons and admirers, that this pernicious system was entirely abolished. Had the founders any just reason for deviating from the standard of the Dutch, which had heen first proved and established by the [Germans ] inventors? The alterations, from whatever motives they were made, certainly re- donnd not to the credit of either the adopters or the first promoters. We shall now leave the founders and printers to reflect upon what we have advanced, and pursue our course, by endeavouring to explain the origin of the names of the various sized letters.