Old Bookwork Upper Case

  A    B    C    D    E    F    G   ABCDEFG
HIKLMNO HIKLMNO
PQRSTVW PQRSTVW
XYZAEOEUJ XYZAEOEUJ
äëïöü_£ âêîôû§
1234567 áéíóú||
8901/41/23/4k    à     è     ì     ò     ù    ¶     *  

This English layout is shown by Timperley: The Printers' Manual (1838) as being on the Old Plan. It is also shown by Southward: Practical Printing (1st ed 1882) as the lay generally adopted for bookwork. It is repeated in the 1884 2nd, 1892 4th and 1900 5th edition (by then called the old-fashioned lay), but is not in the 1887 3rd edition. It is also shown in Excelsior's How to Print of c.1914. Earlier, Tomlinson: Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts showed the same lay in 1853, apart from ç instead of the em dash. In general, the lay is the same as Johnson's of 1824, apart from replacing Johnson's em dash with £, and the ç and hair spaces with fractions. Southward comments that many printers place the figures 1 to 7 in the fifth row of boxes in the left hand division of the case, immediately under the capitals. The next row then has 8 9 0 £ ¼ ½ ¾ and the last (bottom) row contains the five vowels with diaeresis marks, the ç and k.

Southward shows a very different bookwork Old Upper and Improved Upper in the 3rd edition of Practical Printing, both lays having the capitals on the right, and in the bottom rows.

Note that the boxes with A,B, etc. are small caps.

The companion Lower is Bookwork Lower, and the empty configuration is that of Moxon (1683), and Smith (1755), Luckombe (1771), Stower (1808), Miller & Richard (1873), Southward (1882), Mackellar (1885), Barnhart Bros & Spindler's News (1890s), Stephenson Blake & Co (1922), Caslon (1925) etc.

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