COMPOSITOR. One who "composes," or sets up, printing type. The compositor is a highly skilled craftsman, who can only do his work effectively if he is well educated and especially well read, for he has constantly to handle ms. bristling with difficult terms and of varying degrees of legibility.
The first step in the actual production of any class of printed matter is the composition of the written word from the manu script. In the early days of printing, when type faces were large, and all type was set by hand, the compositor's work was of a simple straightforward character, consisting in the main of type setting for books, pamphlets and small news-sheets.
The compositor's time, however, is not wholly taken up in mere type-setting. The matter having been composed, stickful by stick ful, and deposited on a long narrow frame called a galley, is proved or printed in slip form, when it is carefully read for errors by the "corrector of the press" or printer's reader, and afterwards sent to the author for possible alterations. The matter is then made up into columns and pages, the latter being "im posed" on a stone or metal surface to be prepared for the actual printing on the press.
Imposition consists in laying the made-up pages on the imposing surface in such a way as to ensure that when the printed sheet of eight, sixteen or more pages is folded, the folios all fall in correct order and the margins around the pages are in agreement with instructions. A compositor engaged mainly on imposition is called a "stone hand." Various implements are used for this work, such as mallets, planers, shooters, chases and quoins. Modern methods have not eliminated the old-time tools, which are still necessary even in up-to-date printing offices. Metal quoins and furniture and mechanical lock-ups have, however, largely taken the place of the wooden prototypes which were invariably used up to fifty years ago.
In the office of a daily newspaper, the compositor is not called upon to impose the pages in sheets. Each page, owing to its size, is prepared singly for the stereotyper, who casts the plates, which in turn are imposed direct on the cylinders of the press.
The introduction of bar-line composing machines brought about a revolution in type-setting, but did not materially alter other branches of the compositor's work. It is the more rapid produc tion on the machines that has made possible the huge development which has taken place in newspaper production in recent years. The bar-line machine, in which the complete line, or slug, is the unit, as distinct from the single letter or movable type, is most in use, especially in newspaper work, but a machine producing single letter composition also has a wide vogue for book and magazine printing. The machine compositor, although as an apprentice fully trained in all classes of work, is rarely called away from the machine.
In one other respect the compositor's work has undergone a great change. In addition to the setting of displayed advertise ments for newspapers and magazines, the compositor is called upon to produce jobbing work of all descriptions, such as posters, programmes, brochures, catalogues, etc.—each of these providing its own special appeal, and demanding expert interpretation by the compositor, who is usually the designer of the "lay-out" as well. He has thus become much of a craftsman than the old-time compositor, who knew little or nothing of the principles or oppor tunities of artistic display. It is probably due to these intensive changes in the work that the compositors have been able to maintain the old conditions of seven-year apprenticeship. (See PRINTING.)