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If you
pick up a book or anything printed before the turn of the 19th century, you
might think that the printer made a lot of spelling errors. It is true that
there was very little uniform spelling prior to the 18th century, but there
is still something odd about the type of an 18th century printed document. |
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You will
notice, by the illustration above, that some of the words look misspelled. As
if someone keeps adding an “f” where an “s” belongs. In truth, before the
turn of the 19th century, printers actually had 3 different “s’” in the type
cases. They had a capital “S”, a regular “s” and the funny shaped “f” you see
to the right. Actually, if you look
closely at the blown up letters to the right, that a true “f” and the other
odd looking “s” you can see that they are different heights and the odd “s”
has a different cross bar. There is
a rule about how and when to use these three “s’” in typesetting. Capitals
are like we do today. The regular “s” that we use everyday was only used when
an “s” happens at the end of a word. The odd shaped “s” was used throughout
the words except if the “s” is at the
end of a word, or if the “s” is capitalized. It does
seem a bit confusing to us in this day and time, but the 18th century reader
simply saw it as everyday use and would zip right through the book he/she was
reading. |
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This
is a common “f” |
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This
is a common “s” |
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The
printer’s in colonial America often had several different sizes of type and a
few different styles of type too. The favorite type in the latter part of the
18th century was a type font called Caslon. Many printer’s inventories of the
1770’s showed several sizes of Caslon type in their type trays. The term
“font” refers to a set of individual letters of hand set type which consists
of many of each letter of the alphabet in both small and capital letters and
several of each number too. Most all
of the type used in colonial America until the end of the 1700’s was type
imported from England, France, Germany and even Italy. Type, along with his
press, was the most expensive part of a colonial print shop. Hard to replace
and expensive meant that type was cared for and used for decades. Studies of
printing samples from known printers over a period of time shows how certain
type slowly wore rounded be the abrasive paper and constant pressure of the
presses. Colonial
typesetters were unique members of the print shop. Not only literate, they
had to be proper spellers and somewhat knowledgeable in the basics of 18th
century grammar. As they worked, they had to pick up a single letter from a
tray of type and place it up-side-down. In dimly lighted rooms with type
dirtied from black ink, it was a strain on the eyes of the typesetter to
work. Have you
ever heard of calling letters “Upper case” (meaning capitals) or “Lower case”
(meaning small letters)? These phrases come directly from printers of old. To
set type for the item to be printed, the typesetter needed both capital and
small letters available to use. To keep these letters separated and easy to
find, they used wooden trays with small compartments to place the letters of
type. One tray held the capital letters, and another tray was used for the
small letters. As the typesetter worked, he set the two trays or cases as
they were known on a stand, one above the other. The capital letter tray on
the top or “upper” rack and the small letters on the bottom or “lower” rack.
Thus, the “Upper case” were capitals and the “Lower case” were the small
letters. It is
hard for you to “picture” colonial type styles without something to see. The
see actual scanned images of real colonial printing from my collection, you
can go to my “
Actual printing samples”
page to view printed material over 200 years old. Finding
good quality “colonial type fonts” is easier than you think. There is a
computer type font company that specializes in colonial type fonts and
images. I highly recommend their products. In fact, much of what I have used
in this website comes from them. Please visit Walden Fonts at
http://www.waldenfont.com/. |
