Bookwork Lower Case

[ ]aeoe'je thin( )?!;...fl
&bcd isf g ff
hair fi
ffilmnh oyp,wenem
ffl
zvu    t    thick    a    r q:quads
x.-

This English typecase lay is that of Southward: Practical Printing (1st ed 1882 and 2nd ed 1884), but not in the 3rd edition of 1887, which has a very different Lower Case lay. However, the lay re-appears in Southward & Powell, Practical Printing (1892) as illustrated by Gaskell, The Lay of the Case, in Bowers, Studies in Bibliography (1969) and again in the 5th edition of Practical Printing in 1900. It is also shown in Excelsior's How to Print of c.1914. It is identical to Johnson's New of 1824, except that Southward has replaced mids with thins, inserted .... next to fl and omitted mids. Note that the letter k is still stored in the Upper case. There is no ç in either Lower or Upper, but there is an em dash in both. Southward gives a figure of 1500 types per hour when picking type from the case, and 5000 per hour when distributing, and also comments that a simple re-arrangement of the present position of the spaces alone would reduce the distance travelled by a compositor's hand no less than half a mile in the space of an ordinary working day.

The same lay is earlier shown by Timperley: The Printers' Manual (1838) as the Old Plan, except that he shows mids where Southward shows thins, and he puts the thins in the empty boxes beside ff and fi, and shows a 2 dot rather than 3 dot leader in the box beside fl. The lay is also shown by Tomlinson: Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts (1853), except that he puts three part braces in the boxes beside fl ff and fi. Later, Lockwood (1894) omits ... and also omits the hair spaces and em dash.

The companion upper is the Bookwork Upper lay and the empty configuration is the English Lower.

Other empty cases
ie with the boxes left blank
Other type layouts
ie with characters assigned to boxes
Full Index of layoutsGlossary of terms usedSources of the layoutsIntroduction
Quantities in a fount of typeQuantities in a case of type
Notes about Job
and Double Cases
Notes about Upper casesNotes about Lower casesAlembic home page

This page was written in 1998 by David Bolton and last updated 17 July 2015.