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Terminology
As the subject has recently come in for a certain amount of attention, it may be useful to review briefly the terminology employed in the letter. It is mostly simple and unambiguous; there are only a few cases where different terms are used with apparently the same reference. The art of printing itself is variously ars typographica, impressoria ars, typographia, and the verb is imprimere. Paper is both charta and papyrus, but there is perhaps a distinction, charta being restricted to the sheets and papyrus being used more generally for the substance. It comes in folia, arcus, risas et balas, sheets, quires, reams and bales. It is made from linteolum, linen cloth, and the same material is also used as an interlay in the process of damping the heap. The printing house seems to be both officina typographica and (Frobeniana) Typographia, though in view of the use of typographia in the sense of ars typographica mentioned above, one might perhaps take it in that sense here. In two cases the term employed is the same as the present-day English one: compositor, corrector, and the meanings also appear to coincide, though the corrector operates in a strictly defined way, assisted by his lector. The compositor's job is, naturally, componere, and afterwards distribuere, and the types are in loculi, boxes, but no term is given for the cases. The copy he works from is the exemplar. The press, prelum, is operated by two impressores, pressmen, using pilas, balls, to distribute the ink, atramentum, an ater viscosusque liquor, over the forme. The term forma has been discussed in the text; it is perhaps proper to point out that when not referring to proofs it has a purely physical denotation, as is also primarily the case with the types, typi, or more fully typi litterarii, though when the most elegant must be selected, the images printing on the paper (the impressœ litterarum figurœ) are of course also thought of. The term for printing is the usual imprimere. Other team-members, finally, besides the Typographus, the master printer himself, are the typorum fusor, the typefounder, coming only now and then, and the complicator, the gatherer and folder, responsible as well for whatever else needs doing in the shop for which there is not a specialist. The punch-cutter remains too far out of sight to be given an appellation.
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