Printed books are the chief textual witnesses for the majority of
Renaissance English literature. Lacking authorial manuscripts, our
knowledge of the words from the author's pen comes to us through the
medium of print. Modern bibliographical researches have only begun to
explore fully the possibilities of reducing this distance between the author's
pen and the extant printed text by investigating the process by which the
author's words reached print. In this beginning, however, the printing house
compositor has already emerged as a significant factor in the transformation
of manuscript into printed text. Compositorial study concentrates on the
identification and evaluation of the work of these men, and a comprehensive
spelling analysis is one of the first necessities in any thoroughgoing
compositor study.