There are thirty and more different styles of type cases shown in the catalogs of dealers in printers’ supplies, and some of these styles are made in different sizes. This variety may seem bewildering to the beginner who sees the case plans and realizes that a compositor must become familiar with the location of the hundreds of characters in the many boxes of the various cases.

Many of the case plans shown, however, are not in common use, some of them never appearing in the average composing room. A number of them are for special material and their box arrangement is readily understood when one becomes familiar with composing room work. All unusual cases are (or should be) marked clearly, with labels on individual boxes if necessary, showing the name or shape of the character in each box.

The cases used for ordinary hand composition are commonly laid out according to one of two plans: capital case and lower case. Some cases are a combination of both these plans. When the apprentice becomes thoroughly familiar with these two plans and their minor variations he will have little difficulty, if he is observing and careful, in understanding the arrangement of any other special cases which he may have to use occasionally.

The plan of the common capital case is a simple alphabetical order of the letters, with the exception of J and U. The capital case is divided into two sections, each having seven boxes across and seven boxes in vertical line—forty-nine in each half of the case. Of the seven horizontal rows, only the lower four rows are used for the letters, the upper boxes being used for miscellaneous characters; or in some cases left vacant. This arrangement brings the letters AHPX in a vertical line, then BIQY, and so on, as shown in the diagram. 1

1 Note. When the early printers made their case plans I and J, and also the V and U, were treated as variants of the same symbols and no special boxes were provided for them in the capital case. Later, when the J and U were used to express distinctive sounds they were added to the case in the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth places, which explains why they are out of the usual alphabetical order. The young compositor is advised to read further information about the history of these letters under their special heads in any of the unabridged general dictionaries, such as the Standard, Century, Webster’s, etc.

In the lower-case plan there is an irregular arrangement of the alphabet and a difference in the size of the boxes. Some letters are used much more frequently than others, and the extra quantities of these types need larger boxes. These boxes are placed in the case near the compositor’s hand, while the types less frequently used are kept in boxes farther away.

The pair of upper and lower cases, for many years in use as the standard cases for book composition and for large roman fonts, is being abandoned to a great extent. The increasing use of machines for book and periodical composition during the past few years is gradually eliminating the double cases which were necessary for large quantities of type when type was set solely by hand-work. Type cases in pairs are still generally used, however, and in many composing rooms they hold the chief working fonts of large as well as small sizes of type. A thorough familiarity with the box plans of the upper and lower cases should be the first acquirement of every apprentice.

The style of case now commonly used in America is that known as the California job case, which has boxes for alphabets of both capitals and small letters and for figures, points, spaces, quads, and a few other indispensable characters like &, $, dashes, etc. This style of case is popular because it provides in a convenient single tray enough boxes for a complete font of types needed to compose English sentences.

The “lay of the case” may sometimes be learned in a few hours by an alert boy; sometimes the learning may be a matter of days or even weeks, according to the opportunity and the quickness of the learner. It is a good test of the young compositor’s mental quality to note the quickness and accuracy with which he learns this preliminary task. It may be safely predicted that the boy who works around a composing room for months doing odd jobs, even if he is not given special permission to set type, and fails to learn something of the case plan, through lack of interest or initiative on his part, will not prove an alert, intelligent compositor later on.

Some foremen instruct the beginner to go to an old case with a composing stick and hunt for the letters until, by picking and fumbling, he manages to find those he needs for his first stickful. Another practice is to place types of a large size in the corners of the boxes of the principal letters as guides to the unfamiliar small types. Methods of this kind are slipshod and uncertain; there is sure to be an imperfect knowledge of the contents of the case, for a time at least, and consequent mixing of the types.

The best method of learning the case is to draw a plan of it. This can be done by a study of the case itself before beginning to set type. Let the apprentice first copy the plan of the boxes without trying to memorize the letters in them. When the outline of the boxes is complete the letters can then be marked in place. Another way is to make a copy on a large scale from a print such as shown on page11. When this is done the apprentice should ask the advice of his foreman or somebody familiar with the cases in his particular room, to be sure that his plan corresponds with the cases he will use. Not all cases are laid exactly alike, even if they appear to be the same at first glance. Many fonts have peculiar characters, or there may be in the case types not ordinarily belonging to the font, which are kept in some spare boxes, or for some reason changes may be desirable in the positions of the regular characters. In this, as in other matters, a safe rule for the apprentice will be: When in doubt, ask somebody who knows. It will always be wiser to proceed carefully at first and know that one is right than to work along in an uncertain, helter-skelter fashion.

The drawing of plans of the different styles of cases in the room is not only a good way to learn the cases accurately but is also a good exercise in the use of pencil and type-measure; it is a simple problem in mechanical drawing which the young compositor should practice, in preparation for more advanced “layout” work which he may do later.