For decades now, typographic sorts that were unavailable on typewriters have been available to everyone on digital devices. We’ve always had hyphens, but now we can also use dashes. Hyphen: joins elements of compound nouns and modifiers: ne’er-do-well, cure-all,...
Here’s an illustration of how early printers marked the space for hand-lettered versals (‘drop caps,’ or enlarged initial letters). The John Rylands Library in Manchester, England, has a few copies of Dante’s Commedia, printed in Venice by Octavianus Scotus in 1484....
Indulgence form printed by Guttenberg (Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel) “Since the eleventh century, indulgences and pardons had been awarded by the Church for the remission of sins, earned either by prayer or through donations. An indulgence took the form of a...
The Latin alphabet had only 23 letters. J, U, and W were added in the middle ages and early modern era. In the 24-letter alphabet J was represented by I while U was represented by V. In the 16th century Italian printers started distinguishing between the vowel U and...
Charles Overbeck’s The Tramp Printers, Forgotten Trails of the Traveling Typographers from Eberhardt Press is a beautiful little book that would make a lovely gift for either the letterpress lover or union activist in your life. From the Eberhardt Press website: “The...
“During a visit to Italy, I made studies of old inscriptions in Rome and Florence. My attention was caught especially by marble inscriptions on the floor of the Santa Croce Church in Florence. Every day, most people walked over these inscriptions so unmindfully. I got...
