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Type is the single piece of metal bearing a character of the alphabet or number. Typemetal is an alloy made mostly from Lead with Antimony and Tin added to it for strength (2 to 5per cent tin and 10 to 13 per cent Antimony for slug casting machines and 10 to 25 per cent Tin and 20 to 30 per cent Antimony for founders type). In manufacture type is cast accuratly to allow all the characters in a Fount to align correctly, The Diagram below shows a piece of type with all its features marked |
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1. | FACE | ![]() |
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2. | BEVEL | |||
3. | SHOULDER | |||
4. | SHANK | |||
5. | FRONT | |||
6. | NICKS | |||
7. | COUNTER | |||
8. | PIN MARK | |||
9. | BACK | |||
10. | GROOVE | |||
11. | FEET | |||
H. | HEIGHT TOPAPER 0.918" | |||
12. | MAIN STROKE | |||
13. | HAIR-LINE | |||
14. | SERIF | |||
15. | SET | |||
16. | BODY | |||
17. | THE LINE | |||
18. | BEARD | |||
19. | KERN |
The names of the constituent parts of a piece of type
are quite distinct and vary from face to face. The face referred to as
a serif or sans serif face can be Normal, Bold, Italic, Bold Italic each
is kept in separate trays or cases. It is normally Italic faces that have
Kerns, these are the overhang of the extremes of the character to the
body, this is supported by the previous or next piece of type. The terms
used in printing has led to a wealth of jokes regarding a printers anatomy,
one such joke is pictured on this link Cartoon |
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