We don't serve your type in here

'Mind your p's and q's', 'Out of sorts', 'Coin (Quoin) a phrase', are all sayings which have their origins in the world of printing.  I recently visited Robert Smail's print workshop in Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders, and it's a wonderful place.  The Smails were inveterate hoarders, and the workshop, owned now by the National Trust for Scotland, is a treasure trove of their work over more than a century.  They saved everything: labels for parcels of wool that went from the mills to customers across the world, the local newspaper, notices of meetings, wedding invitations, and so on - it's great.



You start with the archivist who is painstakingly working her way through a roomful of documents, and then move on to the typesetting room where you set up your name - I of course got it wrong and first time around was gaoB niloC!  The room has the trays of sorts - the name for an individual piece of type - and if you run out then you're out of sorts.  The trays have the capitals in the upper case, and the rest in the lower case - hence the terms we unthinkingly use today. Sorts are a mirror image of the letter they're meant to print, and they're loaded upside down in the composing stick, so it's easy for even an experienced printer to get his p's and q's mixed up.

You then move on to the print room where there are four wonderful old presses which still work - the printers who tell you about the machines actually use them because the Trust runs a small printing business. 

It is a wonderful place to visit and it doesn't half give you food for thought.  We change fonts all the time on our PCs, and we use italics and bold as a matter of course: at one time every one of those changes involved a different set of trays.  I'm reading Andrew Garfield's 'Just My Type' at present and it reminded me that it was as recent as 1984, when the first Mac was launched, that different fonts became available to anyone who wasn't a printer.



The book is fascinating, and Smail's makes for an absorbing visit - if you're ever up north of the border don't miss out on visiting it.