Pressed for Space: The Effects of Justification and the Printing Process on Fifteenth-Century Orthography.

Author / Editor
Shute, Rosie.

Title
Pressed for Space: The Effects of Justification and the Printing Process on Fifteenth-Century Orthography.

Published
English Studies 98 (2017): 262-82.

Description
Analyzes parallel sections of text from William Caxton's two editions of CT set by the same compositor—Mel and ParsT, NPT and ManT—comparing practices in prose tales and verse tales, and also comparing the practices of the compositor of Richard Pynson's "Reynard the Fox." The tabulated data show that the compositors either broke words over lines, abbreviated words, or altered spaces between words in order to achieve justification; they did not adjust spelling in order to do so.

Chaucer Subjects
Language and Word Studies
Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations