Your job is to write. The publisher’s job is to turn what you write into a book. So why should you worry about printing? Those ink-stained wretches can handle it, right? Not quite. Musicians need to know about microphones. Architects need to know about plumbing. If they don’t, what they conceive doesn’t come out quite…
Words make pages, which make books. Behind that simple statement is the rich history of the mechanisms of printing. My personal history is a thread in the the broader history of the methods by which words reach the eyes of the reader — a narrative that came to life for me when I recently visited…
Yesterday I visited the Museum Plantin Moretus in Antwerp. Christophe Plantin was printer who published his first book in 1555. What surprised me most about what I saw was not how much publishing has changed in 450 years, but how much it hasn’t. Plantin came from Normandy, settled in Antwerp, and started a publishing business…
The Washington Post reported on a study showing that adding two spaces after a period improves readability. Now all the use-two-spaces philistines are using this to justify their depraved practices. But the study proves nothing. Three researchers at Skidmore College, Rebecca L. Johnson, Becky Bui, and Lindsay L. Schmitt, published a paper called “Are two spaces…
I’ve got a long history in the print business. I’ve got detailed knowledge of an obsolescing technology. I can’t help but wonder what that means. Ink is in my blood. My grandfather was a linotype operator for the long-gone Philadelphia Bulletin (an afternoon paper); he worked with hot lead and his hands were so tough he could pick…