the.com/typesetting
The invisible craft you only notice when someone does it badly.
means The work of arranging text and characters into the precise layout that will be printed or displayed, controlling spacing, fonts, and alignment.
from A compound born of the printing trade: "type" plus "set." The "type" comes through Latin from Greek "typos," meaning a stamp, mark, or impression — the imprint left by a blow — which is fitting, since metal type literally stamped ink onto the page. To "set" type meant to arrange those individual metal letters by hand into a frame called a composing stick, building lines, then pages, one tiny slug at a time. The term took hold with the rise of movable type after the 15th-century printing press, and survives now even when no metal is touched and the "setting" happens entirely in software.
- hot metal
- Linotype machines cast type in molten lead per line
- kerning
- The art of nudging letters until they breathe right
- widows
- A single dangling line is named a typographic orphan
- Gutenberg
- His movable type sparked Europe's information revolution
- ligatures
- Some letter pairs fuse to avoid awkward collisions
gutenberg's printing press — invented c.1440 by johannes gutenberg in mainz, germany, enabling mass production of books
linotype machine — invented 1884 by ottmar mergenthaler, revolutionized newspaper printing by casting entire lines of type
monotype machine — invented 1887 by tolbert lanston, allowed individual character casting and composition for fine printing