This here is tiny lead type, placed one bit after another in a particular order so that it makes sense, in English. 10 pt. Modern No. 8. Each letter perfectly manufactured to have its printing surface 0.9186 inches high (type high). Each space between words must have its 3 em block, and each line must be filled to the edge to create an even, tight block of text. All the while, the text is composed upside down and inverse, but still going from left to right. Good luck figuring out the q from the p from the b from the d. The letters are not stored alphabetically either. But once it all comes together, it goes to the press where it gets locked up and inked up. Then we roll along and out comes the printed page with the fine smell of rubber-based ink fumes.
The image above is of the first lines of a poem I printed and bound into a small book for a recent commission. It takes a lot of patience to do this–everything must be read and re-read over to make sure there are no mistakes. This poem would not be very difficult to fix any typos, but if it had been a paragraph of justified lines, a missing or misspelled word might require the whole rest of the paragraph to be realigned (this has happened to me before).
So why do I love this archaic method of printing? Many reasons. I enjoy the slow process. I love the tactility of each stage of setting and printing. It is an old-fashioned and time-tested craft. And the results are unequaled by other forms of printing–the words on the page can be felt due to the impression left on the paper, and each letter and each print has a unique character so that it is always a beautiful surprise to see the final result. Plus, it feels good to take a break from the computer’s instant quasi-perfection and do something completely opposite.
See video below for details on typesetting: