{"id":3857,"date":"2020-09-30T11:30:41","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T01:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=3857"},"modified":"2020-09-17T17:31:05","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T07:01:05","slug":"behind-book-jesse-pollard-typesetting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2020\/09\/behind-book-jesse-pollard-typesetting\/","title":{"rendered":"BEHIND THE BOOKS: Jesse Pollard on Typesetting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Behind<\/a><\/h1>\n

In a very special edition of Behind the Books, apprentice typesetter Jesse Pollard writes about one of his very first typesetting experiences here at Wakefield Press. He also tries to answer a particularly difficult question: what exactly\u00a0is<\/em> typesetting?<\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

Post written by Jesse Pollard<\/pre>\n
In a previous post<\/a>, I likened my job as a typesetter to designing books. I also said that this description wasn\u2019t quite <\/em>the case, but that it\u2019s much more succinct than trying to describe what it is my job entails.<\/p>\n
Typesetting involves getting the specific measurements, typographic elements, and other relevant specifications prepared for every book that we eventually publish. This mostly involves page measurements and layouts, importing the manuscript, selecting and adjusting typographic elements (fonts, spacing, etc.), formatting and correcting text, and then a coffee break (or several).<\/p>\n
If it all sounds a bit overwhelming and\/or boring, this is why it\u2019s much easier to simply say I design books.<\/p>\n
To give you a better example, let me talk about a book that I worked on-and-off for four to six months last year: In Her Own Name<\/em><\/a>, by Helen Jones.<\/h1>\n
The first step when creating a book is to convert what we can into a useable digital format. \"In<\/a>Often, this means taking files such as the manuscript, photos and scans, and converting them into a high quality format. But for older books with no electronic files available, like this one, we take each printed page and scan them individually on the photocopier, the water cooler of printers.<\/p>\n
Once the pages have been scanned, they are opened in Adobe Acrobat Pro to use the \u2018recognise text\u2019 function. This function scans each page and attempts to copy the text on those scans, creating digital text to be edited for later. Since it\u2019s a machine attempting to recognise every single potential instance of a character, you can end up with a lot of missing or incorrect letters.<\/p>\n
\n
It\u2019s important\u00a0in typesetting to be absolutely sure that everything is correct.<\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This is doubly so for names, words in other languages, or obscure and archaic words. I had to cross-reference the original content from the pages and add in every single correction from the original 400-page book.<\/p>\n
Approximately three months after starting this process, most of the mistakes made by the machine had been amended. The correct characters had been inserted, mangled words had been made comprehensible, and each sentence stopped and started where it did originally.<\/p>\n
Next was the methodical process of adjusting the layout of a book.<\/h1>\n
This includes the size of the book, the \u2018margins\u2019 of the text, and how things like decorative text, pictures, and informational tables would fit onto each page. I would argue that the most notable part of typesetting is this process. The new edition of In Her Own Name <\/em>has plenty of footnotes and in-text citations that were also present in the old edition. I had to ensure that every citation was on the same page as it was in the former version, as recreating an index could take a very long while.<\/p>\n
The page layouts are planned and fixed to make sure the text fits neatly onto each page. This involves a lot of checking to make sure the font size, leading (horizontal space between lines), and spacing between the words didn\u2019t make things hard to read or push words onto other pages.<\/p>\n
Once the draft of the book was prepared, I had to fix a lot of minor inconsistencies in the text and incompatible elements that would give our printers a hard time.<\/h1>\n
A smaller part of my job involves making sure each picture is defined correctly and doesn\u2019t use too much or the wrong type of ink. Since most of my work is done on computers, the technology involved needs to read the data as intended; a black and white picture, for example, needs to be properly converted to a greyscale image so the printer doesn\u2019t use more ink than necessary to recreate an image that was slightly green.<\/p>\n
Finally, when the book looks <\/em>ready, we read it thoroughly, to ensure it\u2019ll look exactly as we intended. We\u2019ll print out test pages to see if the text is readable, if the pictures are too big or small,\u00a0or if the layout needs another adjustment (often to meet a printer\u2019s desired specifications like size).\u00a0Finally, we get a test book printed, and, once we\u2019re happy with it, the first print run is ordered.<\/p>\n
So, to make a long and potentially boring story shorter, the elements of typesetting make for a difficult conversation.<\/p>\n
\n
Although I could go on for hours about typesetting and the fun I have, I still prefer to say I design books.<\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n
With so many critical details to keep track of, it\u2019s easy to lose\u00a0time messing around\u00a0to make\u00a0something memorable.\u00a0But, all those small details make the end product that much more satisfying to see finished.<\/p>\n
About the book:<\/h1>\n
In Her Own Name<\/em><\/a>\u00a0tells the important history of changes, from 1836, documenting how South Australian women moved from subordination towards equality. The achievement of women’s suffrage in 1894, after an intensive struggle, was central to their emancipation.<\/p>\n
In Her Own Name<\/em>\u00a0is a political and legal history interwoven with personalities, issues and events.<\/p>\n
Support Wakefield Press by buying our beautiful books!\u00a0\u00a0Visit our\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0or contact us on 08 8352 4455 for more information, or to purchase a book (or three!).\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>We can post your purchase to your doorstep!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a very special edition of Behind the Books, apprentice typesetter Jesse Pollard writes about one of his very first typesetting experiences here at Wakefield Press. He also tries to answer a particularly difficult question: what exactly\u00a0is typesetting?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-fun"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-10d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3936,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857\/revisions\/3936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}