GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS

Alley—The floor space between two stands or cabinets.

Annex Box—A small wood or metal cup or box attached to the type case for holding special characters.

Bank—A high table with the top inclined upon which composed type is placed temporarily. See Dump.

Blank Case—A wooden tray without partitions, or with one partition only.

Box—A subdivision of a type case, in which a quantity of one particular character is kept.

Bracket—An arm or support, usually of metal, to hold cases on top of a stand, to hold galleys, etc.

Cabinet—An enclosure for cases, shelves, or boxes, closed up on the sides and back. See stand.

California Job Case—An extensively used type case arranged with boxes to hold capitals, small letters, figures, points, and the usual characters of a job font, complete in a single tray.

Cap Case—The top case of a standard pair of book or news cases. The capital case, or upper case.

Case—The printer's name for the shallow wooden tray with small compartments for holding types and other materials.

Case Cleaner—A frame like that of a type case with a wire bottom, used to assist in cleaning out type cases that have become foul with dust, grit, or similar dirt. The case cleaner is placed on top of the type case, fitting snugly over each box, and the whole turned up-side-down to transfer the type into the wire bottom. A gentle shaking then sifts out the dirt. When the case is turned back again the types go back into their original boxes. A vacuum cleaner, a small bellows, or an air pump are sometimes used for cleaning type cases.

Coffin—The box-like frame surrounding an imposing stone on its stand.

Dump—The place in a composing room where dead matter is kept until it is distributed; sometimes said of a standing galley where compositors place their composed lines to be assembled for proofing, etc. See Bank.

Empty Case—A case without the letters or types needed to compose lines. The case may have other letters, but some boxes are empty.

Form Rack—For holding printing forms that are locked in chases, before or after printing. It usually holds them in a perpendicular position.

Foul Case, or Dirty Case—One in which the type or other material is badly mixed or which has material that does not properly belong there, as in hasty distribution or because of carelessness.

Frame—Another name for the compositor's work stand or case rack.

Furniture—In printing-office speech this term is used to mean small pieces of wood or metal designed to fill the blank spaces larger than leads, slugs, spaces, and quads. Furniture is placed between pages and around forms locked in chases.

Galley—A shallow tray used by compositors to hold type after the lines have been set and transferred from the composing stick.

Galley Rack—A place for holding a number of galleys in order.

Harris Rule Case—A quarter-size case for holding assortments of brass rules. Four of these trays may be kept in a regular full size blank case, similar to Wisconsin quarter cases. See size of cases.

Hell-box—The receptacle for old, broken, or discarded types.

Italic Case—A style of case to hold a complete font of capitals, small letters, points, figures, etc. Similar to the California job case, but with more boxes on the capital letter side. See page 15.

Job Case—A general term meaning a type case which holds a complete font of type; in distinction from a case which holds only part of a font, like the ordinary news or book case.

Job Galley—A short galley to place on the work stand for making up pages, small forms, etc.

Labor-saving—Said of assortments of leads, rules, furniture, etc., provided in assorted sizes. The sizes are commonly multiples of 6-point or 12-point, and several small pieces may be combined to fill a large space, thus saving the labor necessary to cut each piece to fit its place.

Laying Type—Placing a new assortment of type in its case.

Lay of the Case—The particular plan or arrangement of the types in the various boxes of a case.

Leader Case—A small case or series of boxes for holding brass or cast-type leaders.

Letter Boards—Movable shelves in racks, under imposing tables, and elsewhere, to hold standing type matter, etc.

Low Case—A case with a small portion of the font in it. See Empty Case.

Lower Case—The bottom case of a pair of book or news cases, which rests nearest the compositor. See page 12.

New York Job Case—A case for holding a font of small capitals in addition to the capitals, small letters, figures, etc., of the usual fonts. See page 15.

Reglet—Thin strips of wood, similar to thick leads; used for making up large pages and filling in forms.

Sizes of Cases—There are a number of standard sizes of cases for printers' purposes, allowing a considerable range in adapting these important articles for particular uses. The common sizes are as follows:

Regular full-size case 32¼ × 16¾ in.

Three-quarter size 26¼ × 16¾ in.

Two-third case 22¾ × 16¾ in.

Rooker Case (formerly popular in newspaper composing rooms) 28½ × 14 in.

Wood type case 32¼ × 23 in.

Mammoth wood-type case 44 × 23 in.

Bettis case, for leads, rules, etc 72 × 18 in.

Bettis case, for leads, rules, border, etc 72 in. × 7 in.

Harris case, for rules, border, etc in. × 7 in.

Wisconsin quarter case in. × 7 in.

“Sanspareil” half-size case 15¼ × 14¾ in.

Sort Case—For holding extra or special types, etc., with open sides and back.

Stand—The working frame at which a compositor sets type; in distinction from a cabinet, which has closed sides and no back.

Triple Case—A case divided into three principal sections, each section having forty-nine boxes, like one-half of the common capital case.

Unit Type Cabinet—A container for type cases similar to a sectional book case. The parts are built in sections about 12½ inches high, holding eight or ten cases. There is a base piece upon which the cabinet rests, and a top piece. Any number of the sections may be put together to provide room for additional cases as needed. These cabinets have cases of different depths to provide for fonts of different sizes; shallow cases for job fonts of small types, and other cases of varying depths to give room for larger fonts.