Page:The practice of typography; correct composition; a treatise on spelling, abbreviations, the compounding and division of words, the proper use of figures and nummerals by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914.djvu/49

The facsimiles on the previous page, from two books of the fifteenth century, are fair exhibits of the frequency of early abbreviations.

When books in roman type were printed in the sixteenth century for the unschooled reader, the abbreviations were used sparingly, but they were not entirely under ban in descriptive writing even in the eighteenth century. They might have been frequent in print if compositors could have put them in diminutive letters and on a higher line as readily as the writer of the manuscript, but the selection and adjustment of small type in the text made composition more difficult. When the pub- lisher found that this use of small type delayed work and increased cost, abbreviating with small

A Letter from Robert Scott, the London Agent of Dr. Thomas Marshall, to Samuel Clarice, concerning Type-metal for the Clarendon Press.

These for M^r Clerke att his house in Holy Well in Oxford.

Octob^r 29^th : 1668. M^r Clerke I haue rec' both yo^r lett^rs 5 & had sooner giuen you answer : butt y^t I was out of towne ; now first for M^r Lee, I find hee is willing to Comply in all y^t y^e Vniuersity hath desired & will shortley giue mee some letters w^ch shall bee as a Standard for y^e mettall, . . . this is all att p^rsent from S^r

Yo^r Seru^t to Comand

Robert Scott.

From Notes on a Century of Typography at the University Press, Oxford, 1693-1794, etc. (Horace Hart, 1900), p. 155.