Part 3

He understood the style in which he worked, its capabilities and its disabilities. He made use even of its disabilities in a way that was decorative. I have said that distinction of manner is happily not confined to Italian books, nor to the school of Mr. Morris. Nor is it confined to any one set of people. The worker who saw the value of simplicity, proportion, and colour has existed at various times in all countries. We find these qualities in much beautiful sixteenth century French work--that of the Estiennes, for example--and in some of the earliest German work, terrible as certain periods have been in Germany. But if it is the fashion for the Anglo-Saxon to smile self-complacently at some of the Continental printing of the present day, it must be remembered that English printing, which now stands (in my opinion) at the head of typographic achievement, has never been so before.

In fact, English printing has not furnished interesting or valuable object lessons in style until within the last hundred and fifty years, and in this statement--which I should hesitate, perhaps, to make unsupported--I am glad to find myself borne out by Mr. Alfred Pollard, who remarks: “It is quite easy to be struck with the inferiority of English books and their accessories, such as bindings and illustrations, to those produced on the Continent. To compare the books printed by Caxton with the best work of his German or Italian contemporaries, to compare the books bound for Henry, Prince of Wales, with those bound for the Kings of France, to try to find even a dozen English books printed before 1640 with woodcuts (not imported from abroad) of any real artistic merit--if any one is anxious to reinforce his national modesty, here are three very efficacious methods of doing it.... And if I am asked at what period English printing has attained that occasional primacy which I have claimed for our exponents of all the bookish arts, I would boldly say that it possesses it at the present day.” Again, “manner” may be used with charm, and by this I mean a local and characteristic variant of a real style, which has come to have a literary and historical association of its own. What we call colonial (or Georgian) printing is nothing more than a rendering (often an overstatement) of certain features of seventeenth and eighteenth century English printing. It is well adapted for old-fashioned reprints, or for commercial work intended to describe or to sell old-fashioned wares, though it is often used as having in itself a beauty which renders it independent of its fitness. The “colonist,” could he see the baskets of flowers magnified to the dimensions of giant chap-book illustrations, would disown any part in such obstreperous decoration. The average ornamentation of such books was not of this _genre_ at all, but was rather timid in effect.

Yet such colonial typography sometimes possesses style. But it must be remembered that style, being dependent on proportion and simplicity, is more readily to be found in work whose mannerisms are less marked and where there is less decoration. With the quaint features and decorations of “colonial” printing suppressed, there is very little left of it. The excellence of any given style seems to consist in its power to exist apart from such things, and thus the better the style, the less dependent it is on earmarks or whimsicality. But there must sometimes be decoration, and here of course enters the element of individual taste. Here again early Italian and French books show that, with a little well-chosen decoration,--just enough to give an air of careful luxury,--the greatest elegance of effect can be arrived at. In all the schools of ornament, again, there is special work which, through its grace and reserve, possesses this same happy quality of style and elegance. In many modern books there are ornamental title-pages which have this quality to a very high degree--instances where the introduction of a very little good ornament seems to shed over the whole book in which it is employed a light of luxury and grace.

The early printers, in many of their beautiful marks, grasped this idea. With a very plain, simple title-page there was yet one spot of decoration, graceful in outline, rich in colour. Badly conceived ornamentation and the _abuse of good ornament_ have become so general that one is tempted sometimes to think that the art of decoration is the art of leaving things out! Finally, if all work reflects the life of the day in which it is undertaken, to-day’s restless and complex life may be reflected in our work, which, in its lack of simplicity and repose, may be but an echo of the time. Possibly, the tasteless exaggeration, and the desire to excel our neighbour in startling effects which we see exemplified in some American printing, may be traced to certain evil qualities in American life. But, on the other hand, the interest in varying styles of work and the open-minded acceptance of them for the printer’s purposes is a happy feature of industrial endeavour to-day, and one, too, which is characteristic of our epoch and country. It would be idle to expect in the art of printing that concerted harmony which we do not find in architecture, in painting, or in literature. We must recognize this lack of concert, whether we like it or not.

Instead of wishing it otherwise, it is better to accept it, and make the best of it. To conclude, style in printing does not permanently reside in any one manner of work, but in those principles on which almost all manners of work may be based. We have to be thankful that of late things are turning in the direction of greater simplicity, greater reserve, and less decoration. And as the printer is more and more deprived of adventitious aids, he will find himself face to face with those fundamental principles of style which have marked the work of the great printers of the past; as they must the work of those to come. * * * * * _The Seven Champions of Typography_ _The Seven Champions of Typography_ There was once upon a time a curate, whose cast of thought ran to symbolism, and who became so fascinated by the mystical meanings of the number seven, that one day, being called upon unexpectedly to preach, he inflicted on his congregation all that he could for the moment remember of seven-fold numbers occurring in the Old and New Testaments--the days of creation, the gifts of the Spirit, the seven churches of Asia, etc.; but like many extempore speakers before and since, he suddenly became confused and ended his phrase precipitately with the surprising words, “And we all remember, dear brethren, that there were seven apostles--plus five!” When I entitled this paper The Seven Champions of Typography I had in mind (being a lay person) the seven champions of Christendom, the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, stars, deadly sins, liberal arts, and some other “sevens.” But on counting up my champions, I was disconcerted to discover that there were but six--thus (like the curate) finding myself suddenly at sixes and sevens in more senses than one. Yet why spoil a good title for a mere detail! That royal and unpleasant spinster called Good Queen Bess or the Virgin Queen--who appears according to the best modern authorities to have been neither--is said to have considered a lie to be merely an intellectual way of getting over a difficulty. Perhaps so: but, even then, remembering the precept of St. Francis de Sales, “Little things for little people,” we have our little scruples.

So I propose to make my title good by adding to six Champions of Typography--Spacing, Leading, Indentation, Ink, Paper, and Imposition--one more--the most important of all, without which (as is alleged of charity) the rest profiteth nothing. That Seventh Champion, dear Reader, is _You_. And it all depends on how seriously you take the following pages, whether my title turns out to be truth or falsehood! I assume for it no further responsibility. * * * * * No matter how admirably we plan our work, nor how fine in design are the types we select, its appearance when printed depends on good composition,--the combination of type into words, the arrangement of words in lines, and the assemblage of lines to make pages. And composition falls into three divisions, spacing, leading, and proper indentation--all factors in the effect of a type-page. Furthermore, the successful presentation of our printing depends upon three things more--ink, colour of paper, and proper imposition on that paper. On these six points--for I shall not bore the reader and myself by continuing the “champion” nomenclature--the successful effect of our plans for printing and the use of good type-forms must rely. I.

Spacing is a term used in connection with composition to describe the space between the words in a line of type, or the lateral distance of one word from another. It plays an extremely important part in composition. Everybody knows that there must be space between words, but the problem for the printer is its proper adjustment. This is effected by the discriminating use of spaces of different thickness, just as leading--the proper adjustment of space between lines--requires the intelligent use of leads. The spaces between words in a line should be apparently uniform. If they were _exactly_ uniform, they would not seem so to the eye; more space being required between two ascending lower-case letters such as “l,” which may end one word and begin another (as in “medical libraries”), than between a “y” and an “a” (as in “any author”). “In good printing,” said William Morris, in his paper on “Printing” in _Arts and Crafts Essays_, “the spaces between the words should be as near as possible equal (it is impossible that they should be quite equal except in lines of poetry); modern printers understand this, but it is only practised in the very best establishments. But another point which they should attend to they almost always disregard; this is the tendency to the formation of ugly meandering white lines or ‘rivers’ in the page, a blemish which can be nearly, though not wholly, avoided by care and forethought, the desirable thing being ‘the breaking of the line’ as in bonding masonry or brickwork, thus: [Illustration: ____________ ____________ ____________ ____________ ] The general _solidity_ of a page is much to be sought for: modern printers generally overdo the ‘whites’ in the spacing, a defect probably forced on them by the characterless quality of the letters. For where these are boldly and carefully designed, and each letter is thoroughly individual in form, the words may be set much closer together, without loss of clearness.

No definite rules, however, except the avoidance of ‘rivers’[2] and excess of white, can be given for the spacing, which requires the constant exercise of judgment and taste on the part of the printer.” On looking at the page of Mr. Morris’s essay about proper spacing, we find the enemy has sown tares in the field, for in derision of Mr. Morris’s own theories, a large white “river” runs across the very phrase in which he deplores them! The book was issued under the auspices of the London Society of Arts and Crafts--an example of how much easier it is to tell people that work should be done “so that our commonest things are beautiful,” than it is to put the precept into practice! While I cannot agree with much that has been said about the folly of close spacing and pages of type set solid (_i.e._ without leading), as if it were merely an affected return to archaic methods and a perverse desire to make books unreadable, some modern printers, in their efforts to obtain “colour” in a page, have undoubtedly forgotten that the spacing of a line must be sufficient to make a distinct separation between words and one sufficient to be _readily_ apparent to the eye. A good test of spacing is to hold a printed page upside down, when, the sense of the words not being caught, the eye more readily perceives whether the spacing of the page is even or not. An old and rather ignorant prejudice against the breaking of words makes against good spacing. It is better not to break words if one can help it, but often they must be broken, if good spacing is to be maintained.

Many printers who may be willing to break single words consider that two consecutive lines should not end with hyphens; but hyphens at the end of two, three, or even four successive lines, while undesirable, are not so ugly as matter unevenly spaced to avoid them.[3] The problem is to space evenly in spite of these difficulties. Then again bad spacing may often be the result of corrections. Sometimes replacing one letter by another makes no change in the proper spacing of a line; but when words are replaced by longer or shorter ones, or when whole phrases are inserted, serious difficulties occur. Useless and expensive changes are often ordered by an author because he does not know the tedious process by which they are effected, or realize that the substitution of one word for another may necessitate carrying over words or parts of words for several lines. Yet if, to avoid expense, this is not done, the result is uneven, and therefore bad, spacing. The principles of good spacing which have been stated are of equal application to machine-set type. If by the use of type-setting machines printers cannot follow this “counsel of perfection,” it would appear to show that, as yet, the best hand composition is better. II.

The excessive indentation of paragraphs, and em width spaces between sentences, are usually unnecessary. In an early printed book the paragraphs were indented to allow a paragraph mark to be put in by hand. Often the paragraph marks were never filled in, and this led to the discovery that the eye could pick out beginnings of paragraphs by blanks almost as well as by paragraph marks. While a paragraph mark preserved more or less the desirable regularity of outline of the page, whereas a blank space broke it, for clearness it was necessary that it should be broken; but not to such an extent as it often is by modern indentation. Again, the conventional use of an em quad at the beginning of a new sentence is unnecessary and makes “holes” in the composition of pages. In most cases, the same spacing used between other words in the line, together with the period at the end of one sentence and the capital letter at the beginning of the next, make a sufficient break. III. Leading is to lines what spacing is to words; and the introduction of leads between lines of type has a great deal to do with the effect of a page.

Type set solid is usually hard to read, and slight leading improves its legibility. When to lead and how much to lead is a matter of taste and judgment. For with the same type the colour of a page can be increased or decreased by its leading. Nor does every type demand the same amount of leading. Black-letter, although in early times occasionally leaded for purposes of manuscript interlineation, should normally never be leaded, and should be closely spaced: for leading of black-letter makes a “striped” page; open spacing, a page full of holes. On the other hand, light faces of roman type almost always look better leaded, and sometimes require slightly open spacing. So it will be seen that the effect of printed pages often depends on leading and spacing as well as on the face of type employed. The leading of the same kind of type in a given book should be uniform throughout.

There is no more wretched product in typography than a book in which, for reasons of economy or convenience, pages which should have the same leading or the same size of type throughout are set with less leading or in a smaller type to “get the matter in.” An unbroken type-page when held at a little distance should make a perfectly defined block of even tint. This impression on paper of a definite parallelogram which is practically uniform in tone is a chief factor in the beauty of a printed book. Early books were remarkable for the even colour of their pages, and that is one reason that they give the eye a sense of satisfaction. This was arrived at by the use of types which were masculine in design and fairly uniform in weight of line, set solid, and close spaced. “Experience proves,” says Day, “that the eye is best satisfied by a tolerably uniform distribution of the letters, Roman, Gothic, or whatever their character, over it [the page], so that they give at first sight the impression of a fairly even surface, distinguished from the surrounding surface (that is, the margin) more by a difference of tint than by any appreciable letter-forms within the mass.”[4] What about machine composition and type-faces for machine-work, some one may ask? To answer this very proper question I must make a digression. The introduction of a linotype or monotype into a printing-office is open to no objection, provided the machine is operated with the same care that is taken with the best hand-setting, in which case the cost is often, I fear, much the same as if set by hand; for the proper justification of the lines of type reduces the rapidity of their product. Usually machines have not been carefully worked, and to judge them by their ordinary product is not fair. Then again machines can be desirably employed only in printing-houses which have enough work of the kind that can be _well done_ upon such machines.

They cannot always readily or quickly perform certain sorts of composition, in spite of the ingenious exhibits of this sort of type-setting which are shown as specimens of their work. The collection of matrices from which types are cast, on both linotype and monotype machines, has been, until lately, unworthy of their pretensions, and it is difficult to see on what principle such a variety of mean types, differing so slightly from one another, were for many years “the only wear.” Nowadays they are enormously improved, and the best of them have been used for book-work with marked success. On the other hand, it is absurd to be prejudiced by a machine or machine-work because it is mechanical; the results obtained are what really count. Some ultra-conservative men are (or have been) foolish enough to shy at new inventions in machinery--for type-setting, for instance. They feel that somehow a “modern spirit” is in the machinery, and that in some sly and malign way it will defeat artistic excellence! This is quite childish. The problem is to determine how work can be done best. If for some typography the old method (incidentally endeared to the lover of early printing by historical associations) produces a better result than a modern machine, then the old method may be adhered to.

If a modern machine does other classes of printing better and quicker than the old method and more conveniently for the workmen, it is to be adopted. The tendency about us, it is true, is to glorify speed, without paying attention to the details of the result. “This machine,” says the seller, “can turn out so many ems per hour”; but one must regard only _how many ems properly set up_ such a machine can turn out, and not be beguiled by speed, which is an attribute of excellence in automobiles, but not the sole question in type-setting! To judge between the sentimentalist who believes that all virtue resides in the hand, and the commercialist who thinks that salvation is obtained by a machine, is not easy. I prefer good machine work to bad hand work and vice versa. If one is as good as the other,--incidentally I have my doubts,--I take the quickest and cheapest. But I quote without comment the statement of a distinguished colleague--whose name is withheld for what we are nowadays pleased to call prudential reasons--“The machine is like a jungle animal, more or less obedient under the whip, but always a wild animal.” IV. To show good type-setting (whether set by machine or by hand) to advantage, the inking of a page must be even. Composition, no matter how careful, is dependent on good ink and the right amount of it.

The letters in a printed page, if not well inked, show, when examined through a magnifying glass, little specks of white through the black, and the effect of the type, as a whole, is lifeless and faded. The result of using too much ink is so obvious that it is needless to say anything about it. Furthermore, ink must be black. A great deal of the so-called black ink used in modern books has a brown, green, pink, or blue tinge. If a good black ink is compared with inks commonly employed, it will be found that there is little that is really black. It is cheaper to make ink of materials that give it disagreeable tinges than to use the proper ingredients. But no page will be effective or lively except when printed in pure black ink. V.

Though ink must be black, paper should not always be white. The somewhat irregular Caslon type (and some “period” and transitional types) appears much more agreeably when printed on a slightly rough paper of a cream tint. Caslon’s types in his day were printed on wet paper, which thickened their lines and roughened the paper, so that we get more nearly the effect that he meant them to have when we print them on toned, rough paper. If smooth white paper is used for old style types, it exposes their slight crudities of form in a disagreeable way, and accents too much the shape of individual letters. This is understood by some type-founders, who for that reason often display their old style types on toned paper. Many people prefer a smooth and pure white paper (or think they do) because they look at the paper alone, and do not realize that its colour makes any difference in the effect of printing. Some of the lighter modern-faced types look well on a paper that is nearly white; for they are more clean cut, more regular in shape, and have not the irregularities which such a paper reveals. For these types the paper should _look_ white.