What I learned from my homework
Apr. 26th, 2002 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI had to read the glossary of Words Into Type, a useful book that hasn't been updated since 1974 (and it shows, in the glossary terms...).
There were a few interesting items.
Pieces of (metal) type for printing used to be kept in cases. The earliest cases had two levels... which is why capitals are "uppercase" and the rest are "lowercase". And if a box doesn't have any type left in it, it's "out of sorts." (there, there.)
"Calender" may usually be a typo, but it is a word on its own, too, meaning to make paper smooth and glossy by passing through rollers.
"Fluent" has an alternate meaning: it's the integral symbol!
"Emage" is not an online wizard, but the area of text measured in terms of ems of its type size (ie, em-age, not e-mage. not something I'd use now...).
And the reason "leading" is pronounced "ledding" is because the strips of metal used to separate lines of type were called leads.
We now return you to your usual, typographically normal program...
e
There were a few interesting items.
Pieces of (metal) type for printing used to be kept in cases. The earliest cases had two levels... which is why capitals are "uppercase" and the rest are "lowercase". And if a box doesn't have any type left in it, it's "out of sorts." (there, there.)
"Calender" may usually be a typo, but it is a word on its own, too, meaning to make paper smooth and glossy by passing through rollers.
"Fluent" has an alternate meaning: it's the integral symbol!
"Emage" is not an online wizard, but the area of text measured in terms of ems of its type size (ie, em-age, not e-mage. not something I'd use now...).
And the reason "leading" is pronounced "ledding" is because the strips of metal used to separate lines of type were called leads.
We now return you to your usual, typographically normal program...
e