Copying from the Scriptorium to the Cell Phone

The Science Fiction Writers of America publishes a news blog, “Writer Beware.” The July 31, 2026, entry is about changes to the Canon of Ethics of the American Association of Literary Agents. In their summary, the SFWA cites a comment from Publisher’s Weekly: 

“A surprising omission from the revisions is any language addressing AI. According to PW’s article on the revisions, though, this is something the AALA is looking at. Guidelines around AI usage are notably absent from this round of revisions, though AI use ranked as one of the top concerns among agents in a recent AALA survey. [AALA president Regina] Brooks said the AALA has begun circulating information internally and among members, but is “waiting for things to settle out” before formalizing anything.” 

Common chatter about AI is ubiquitous. I am complacent and ambivalent. I do recognize that soon (if not yesterday), an AI is going to sue in court for its rights as an artificial individual under the law, the same any other corporation. Whatever that may bring, for the immediate present, AI is just another computer program, a platform, an environment, no different than Cobol, Python, DuckDuckGo, or Amazon Web Services. Collectively, they are only wider abstractions to encompass concepts. 

It remains that the grammar checker and spellchecker are annoying but convenient. Typeahead is a klaxon for cliches. When you are in a Zoom call (or similar) turn on CC:Closed Captions and see whether and to what extent that program learns the nuances of your specialized vocabulary. 

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” – Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, (Book I, X “Wages and Profit,” Part I)

Writers and artists worry about losing income to new tools and it is an old problem. When movable type printing was invented copyists were disadvantaged; they rebelled and lost. When all copies were made by hand, it was a nice gift to copy a book and give it to your friend. The ability to produce hundreds or thousands of copies led to copyright laws. 

Until the invention of computers, copying and reading were distinct acts. In his 1985 book, Electronic Life, Michael Crichton asserted that reading with a computer is now identical with copying to a computer. My Apple iPhone connects automatically to my Apple iMac and copies content from one to the other.

During one of several continuing and ironic discussions with friends in the Fandom Association of Central Texas (FACT) about why we ban AI, the comment was made, “All they do is scrape the internet.” 

And what do you do? Does your story have a faster-than-light spaceship with colonists, or does it have dragons, vampires, witches, sorcerers, or does have robots or aliens? 

FACT sponsors the annual ArmadilloCon science fiction convention in Austin. During a Board meeting, discussing upcoming plans, it was said that an invitation to speak and present had been intended for a new popular writer but that as it happens, the writer-artist encourages “fanfic” written by their readers. Moreover, they actively promote and reward the use of AI tools to write and illustrate these offshoot narrations. So, the convention withdrew the invitation. To me, that was wrong of FACT.

On YouTube is a video about a monk learning to use a book. Danish is not required to understand the humor and it is interesting to read the cognates.

It is a cartoon that a proofreader found when my wife was an employee of a large commercial printer and also freelanced, reading over 100 books for Bantam Doubleday. The monk is running into the scriptorium with sweat and exclamation points over his head. He is barely carrying a double armload of scrolls. He says, "It should be celebrate!!"  

Science Fiction Writers of America https://sfwa.org/

SFWA “Writer Beware” blog by Victoria Strauss here: https://writerbeware.blog/2026/07/31/the-aala-makes-significant-updates-to-its-canon-of-ethics/

Publisher’s Weekly comment article here 

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/100919-major-aala-ethics-update-allows-agents-to-offer-paid-editorial-publicity-services.html

A Brief History of Printing.
Part II: The Economic History of Printing
by Frederick W. Hamilton,
Committee on Eduction, 1918.
From Gutenberg here.

"A Brief History of Printing. Part II: The Economic History of Printing" by Frederick W. Hamilton is a historical account likely written in the early 20th century. The work focuses on the economic dimensions surrounding the printing industry from the advent of printing in the mid-15th century through to the French Revolution in 1789. It delves into government regulations, labor conditions, and the evolving dynamics of the trade guilds impacted by the rise of printing. The opening of this volume introduces a thorough analysis of the printing industry’s economic landscape during a transformative period. It highlights how printers operated largely outside established guild systems, contending with governmental oversight and fluctuating market demands. Hamilton outlines how apprenticeships were structured, exploring the socioeconomic conditions faced by various classes of workers within the industry. He also contextualizes the historical significance of printing as not merely an industrial endeavor but as a pivotal influence on societal thought and subsequent revolutions, setting the stage for a detailed exploration of regulations, labor relations, and the inevitable shifts leading to modernization. (This is an automatically generated summary.)  A Brief History of Printing. Part II: The Economic History of Printing by Frederick W. Hamilton, Committee on Eduction, 1918.  

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For the Glory of Old Lincoln High 

All Volitional Beings Deserve Rights 

Generative AI: As Big as it is, it is only a Program 

Art & Copy 

Start the Presses 

Hermann Zapf on Alphabets 

Libraries of the Founders 

Five Books about Books 

Goudy by Bernard Lewis and Goudy in His Own Words 

Frank Romano’s History of Desktop Publishing 

Frank Romano's History of Desktop Publishing

“The combination of the LaserWriter, PostScript, PageMaker and the Mac’s GUI and built-in AppleTalk networking would ultimately create desktop publishing.” (page 84). Today, everyone is a publisher. To read is to print. To download is to copy. Copies are stored and retrieved. Sources are cited. This is how we got here. History of Desktop Publishing by Frank Romano is a narrative catalog. The story ends just before now and suggests some of the probable next generation of media, means, and methods. 

From The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley

By the standards of the past in the time before the Renaissance in Italy any improvement from the first typewriter could have sustained three generations over a century and today we would be enjoying the first teletypes in our homes. In science fiction we call that subgenre Steampunk: life in 2000 as seen from 1865. But that is not what happened. Instead, we have experienced a rapid evolution of tools for thinking and for the communication of those thoughts.

In the human lifetime after individual letters in lead type were no longer pulled from job cases and placed in composition sticks, type met ink and paper via keys, wheels, balls, film images, and matrices of 7, 9, or 24 striking wires. Ink was and is blown through magnets or fixed by electrical charges or by heat or both or chemical reaction with the paper and air.

Storage evolved through magnetic tape on large reels and small cassettes, floppy disks (first large and then soon smaller and denser), driven by direct friction contact or floating on a cushion of air. Semiconductor memory arrays are still mounted on the computer motherboard while others are conveniently removable even to be carried on a keychain. 

The genius of these rapid intellectual achievements, is exactly that many of them were incremental and just as many were truly new attempts to solve the same problems of transmitting ideas by giving permanent form to words.

In the 12th grade, his guidance counselor sent him to
Mergenthaler to seek a job interview. Romano went with a
classmate. Frank got the job but his classmate did not.

Frank Romano has a lot of good visibility as the historian of modern printing. Modern printing needed his formal investigations and detailed reports because the evolution was so rapid. Gordon Moore’s Law (observation) is that overall commonly available computing power has and will double every 2.5 years. “Moore’s Law is Dead” is a meme that asserts changes in the dimensions of understanding of the tools themselves. One path is that the changes are much greater; another is that they cease. 

Fortunately for us, Frank Romano is not alone and his Museum of Printing in Havehill, Massachusetts, is one of several institutions that preserve the tools, techniques, and traditions of the arts and sciences that instantiate and transubstantiate our thoughts across time and space. 

• Museum of Printing
• 15 Thornton Avenue, Haverhill, MA 01832
• The Museum of Printing is dedicated to preserving the rich history of the graphic arts, printing and typesetting technology, and printing craftsmanship.
  The collection contains hundreds of antique printing, typesetting, and bindery machines, as well as a library of books and printing-related documents.
  A unique holding is the Mergenthaler Font Library, the original drawings that were the starting point for manufacturing matrices for Linotype machines. Other font libraries are those for the Intertype Photosetter and the remains of the font library of the Photon Corporation (after the unfortunate destruction of much of this resource).
• The Museum will also become the home for the archives of the TUGboat editor, including many items related to TeX and to the typography of mathematics.
• Providence Public Library Special Collections
• The Updike Collection on the History of Printing
• 150 Empire Street, Providence, RI 02903
• Daniel Berkeley Updike was proprietor of the Merrymount Press in Boston.
• In addition to thousands of books (among them many early type specimen books), prints, ephemera, and some artifacts (including the matrices for the Montallegro and Merrymount types, commissioned by Mr. Updike for his own use), the collection includes Mr. Updike’s personal correspondence from 1878 to his death in 1941.
• An annual event is the Updike Prize for Student Type Design
• For more information, call +1 (401) 455-8021.
• It is best to plan ahead and make arrangements to see this collection.
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• Cary Graphic Arts Collection
• 90 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623-5604, USA
  Phone: (585) 475-3961
  Fax: (585) 475-6900
• Dedicated to graphic communication history and practices, this library is included in the curriculum of several courses offered by RIT's College of Imaging Arts and Sciences.
• Among the holdings is the most substantial collection in America on the work of Hermann Zapf, who held the Melbert B. Cary Distinguished Professorship at RIT from 1977-1987.
• They have many videos posted on their YouTube channel, including a tour of the press room and use of their Goudy printing press.
• Stanford University Library
• Information about opening hours and library locations can be found here.
• Department of Special Collections
• Donald E Knuth papers, 1962-2015 - Held offsite; must be reserved at least 48 hours in advance.

https://www.cincinnatitypeprintmuseum.org/

These preservations are valuable because they are beautiful and their operations are harmonious and parsimonious. And they work. These are the moorings and anchors of our fragile civilization. 

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Raymond Loewy 

Michael Shermer's Moral Arc

The Rational Optimist and the Grand Complication 

Hypatia of Alexandria 

Bringing Philosophy to Athens: Aspasia of Miletus

Hermann Zapf on Alphabets

Hermann Zapf's legacy remains today in the typefaces offered by Microsoft Word: Optima, Palatino, and Zapfino. Other platforms deliver Melior and Linotype Aldus. Searching Google for Hallmark Jeannette will not take you to the font he designed for the greeting card company. The Blogspot platform is woefully underpowered for typography. We make do with what we have.

The whole duty of Typography, as of Calligraphy, is to communicate to the imagination, without loss by the way, the thought or image intended to be communicated by the Author. – Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson. (Frontispiece.) 

[Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (né Sanderson; 2 December 1840 – 7 September 1922) was an English artist and bookbinder associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. ... He was the godfather of Bertrand Russell. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._J._Cobden-Sanderson]

“While visiting the United States in 1954 and 1957, I often talked with friends about printing types and modern industrial design. It seemed odd to find ultra-modern folk there for whom a plane that needed nineteen hours to fly from Frankfurt to New York was already a hobbling vehicle, but who in their own printed works preferred the most old-fashioned types of the 19th century. How one wished to ask these fanatics of ‘progress’ whether they still drive cars built in 1900, or furnish home or office in turn-of-the-century style. […]

The type of today and of tomorrow will hardly be a faithful recutting of a 16th century roman of the Renaissance, nor the original cutting of a classical face of Bodoni’s time—but neither will it be a sans-serif of the 19th century. It will surely be said that most book printers and their customers demand the historical forms. But on the other hand most of the public, too, demands cheap imitations of Chippendale furniture, Renaissance writing tables and romantic reproductions. Nor is it always the little people for whom the modern forms lack appeal, since taste only too often fails to keep pace with the growth of the bank account. Progress always demands courage; and as the powers of conservatism were and are always in the majority, they will not stop the entire development, they can only retard it. But where do we stand today? There is much talk of modern design, but if we study the catalogues and promotional printing we often find late 19th century printing types used to promote these ‘modern forms’. Just to which point in the 19th century do our lives and endeavors seek to return? Can the second half of the 19th century, the time of stylistic confusion and historicism, offer any basis for a future development? One has only to think of railway stations with Doric columns of iron, and of neo-gothic churches, or simply the ample beards of our great-grandfathers.” – pg. 36-37.

And is it not an anachronism when Albert Einstein’s relativity theory, or works by Bertrand Russell, Pasternak, and other such are printed with types of historic design? Pg. 59-60

 

 

See also Hunt Roman: The Birth of a Type,
George H. M. Lawrence, ed., Pittsburgh Bibliophiles, 1965.
Zapf designed this face for the Hunt Botanical Library.
(See also https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/hunt-roman/)

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Words into Type 

Start the Presses! 

For the Glory of Old Lincoln High 

Money as Press and Speech 

Goudy by Bernard Lewis and Goudy in His Own Words

Twice Frederic W. Goudy lost his life work to fires that destroyed his offices and workshops. Disheartening as they must have been, we have not much in his own words about the affects. He regained his equilibrium by focusing on the immediate work and then continuing with the projects that had been interrupted. 

Much of Behind the Type: The Life Story of Frederic W. Goudy 

Behind the Type:
The Life Story of Frederic W. Goudy 
by Bernard Lewis . 
Issued by the Department of Printing,
Carnegie Institute of Technology,
Pittsburgh, 1941.

by Bernard Lewis would be considered creative non-fiction today. It was the style of the times for biographers to add dimension and color to the recorded facts. Born on March 8, 1865, Goudy’s early life lessons came in small towns in Illinois and the Dakota Territory. Even before he left home, he was a salesman, an impresario, an entrepreneur. So, some of this story came from contemporary newspaper accounts written by Goudy or about him but there is little of that in the opening scenes that introduce us to the child and the teenager.

 

“The year before [when he was seventeen], he had exhibited a copy of a wood engraving from one of the current magazines in the Shelbyville County Fair and had won first prize, earning an award of three dollars and a blue ribbon. To any who congratulated him he observed that there was little competition, but he admitted that he had a good eye and copied well. And to prove it he repeated another prize performance at the next annual fair.” (p. 14-15).

 

He often worked as a bookkeeper typically for real estate companies that were transient themselves, even when he was not. He had little patience for ineptitude or idleness and until he discovered typography, he let his natural curiosity take him to an array of ventures, such as the Anglo-Dakota Loan and Trust Company when he was 23. All of those experiences eventually served him well when he matured into the career that made him famous to us. Even so, his path in printing and typography was halting with changes in direction at each station. His sense of personal purpose complemented his artistic sentiments and Goudy continued to develop the aesthetic motives that defined his commercial projects.

 

“In printing the Chapbook Goudy engineered a simple stunt that amazed printers and made him the subject of much discussion. He at first could find no type suitable for printing the Chapbook because of its small size, but after taking measurements he ordered nine point “Original Old Style” cast on an eight point body, achieving admirably close fitting type.” (p. 36-37). 

The Alphabet and Elements of Lettering
by Frederic W. Goudy.
University of California Press, 1942.

That success changed the name of his firm from Booklet Press to Camelot Press when he moved to the center of the printing district in Chicago. 

 

Goudy is remembered for adapting the line weights, curves, stems, and serifs of Renaissance hand lettering to modern printing. That is shallow and wrong. He was not a copyist. Goudy studied the best of the previous designs in order to understand why they worked. In his essay, “The Ethics and Aesthetics of Type and Typography: An address delivered at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, February 12, 1938,” he said: 

“There was a time in the golden age of type design when a page decoration, a head-piece, a fleuron, a new type face might have proved a key to typographic distinction because it was recognized as the work of a master and respected accordingly. But by this I do not intend to imply that deference must necessarily be given to old types or old work of little merit because they are old. Many, unfortunately, possess shortcomings even as those of later vintage. Yet even the best of the old types should not be revived, imitated, adapted, reproduced, or copied for present day use with camera-like fidelity—prima facie evidence of modern poverty of invention (or mental laziness). The originals had matchless charm because they were stamped with the personality of their makers. The reproductions invariably lack the spirit of idealism of the originators and cannot fail to betray the fact that the faker can never do entire justice to the distinctive qualities that made the original designs great.”

Goudy could have been speaking for his contemporary, Ayn Rand's Howard Roark, when he complained of typographers who produce copies of copies of copies (The Alphabet, page 50n.) 

 

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On Second Thought 

The Universe of 1962 

My Armadillocon Presentations 

Regimental Public Affairs Officer 

 

Frederic W. Goudy by Peter Beilenson

I wish that this story were more interesting. I am willing to believe that the life of Frederic W. Goudy was prosaic and yet could be made heart-pounding. In this case, the complete lack of examples only delivered a dinner speech for those already in the know. Fonts and faces are cited by name and they are described as heavy or full but not strong and so on, none of which delivers a tenable image.

 

Composed in Village No. 2 by
the Lanston Monotype Machine Co.
of Philadelphia. Printed by Walpole Printing.
Paper from Quincy P. Emery. Bound by 
Russell-Rutter. 300 copies made.

Attribution: American Type Founders.
Digitisation is public-domain.via Wikimedia Commons

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Armadillocon 45 

Armadilloncon 44 Part 2 

Armadillocon 40 Part 1 

Armadillocon 39 

Words into Type

Sir Robert worked hard and well to make himself a king and then wanted to unite his realm under a single banner. So, he called his vassals into his great hall where they stood with their shields, escutcheons, and crests. Looking out over the array, he said, “The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.” (That fable was in a computer magazine from about 1987.) 

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

I consider The Chicago Manual of Style to be the baseline. It is easy, direct, and common for American English. That volume is in my wife’s office. She edited over a hundred books for Bantam-Doubleday Dell and has several other style guides on her shelf. I have Chicago’s origin, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations by Kate L. Turabian, fifth edition revised and expanded by Bonnie Birtwistle Honigsblum, University of Chicago Press, 1987. Unless otherwise directed, I turn to that first.

 

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

When I worked at Coin World newspaper, we were given our own copies of the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual. It was a revelation to learn what a newspaper can be sued for. The truth is not always a defense in a court of law. In Michigan, it is and that was written into the state constitution.

 

Microsoft PowerPoint

For science writing, I have the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fourth edition, 1994. 

 

The book that taught me first was Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. I still open it for random reminders and I pick up used copies to give to people who tell me that they want to be writers. But OMG it is over a century old. OTOH, the best style is conservative. Of course, YMMV. 

 

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

On that basis, I was happy to find Modern English Handbook, Third Edition by Robert M. Gorrell and Charlton Laird, Prentice-Hall, 1962. I bought it for 50 cents in 2001. It was the textbook for 12^th graders at Cleveland’s Lincoln High School when I was in the ninth and tenth grades 1964-65 and also on the staff of the school newspaper. My first journalism class was an eighth grade elective, but junior high pupils were not allowed to work on the Lincoln Log. At that time, I also had printing as a shop class elective. The Lincoln Log was not a school product but was contracted to a commercial printer which produced other school and community newspapers. With large ethnic communities, Cleveland had weekly papers in German, Hungarian, and other languages.

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

 

I actually never used Words into Type. It is in Laurel’s office. I just liked the phrase as a descriptive title for this blog entry. 

 

Accepted as an assistant editor for This Month in Astronomical History, an online publication of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society, I was promoted early to editor in the wake of the Covid crisis. Considering that my degrees are in criminology and social science, and that I am an Amateur Affiliate member of the AAS, it is an honor and privilege to be responsible for fact-checking, as well as grammar, syntax, and style. I collaborate with subject matter experts, researchers, faculty, and other astronomers. I recruit writers and also write features to fulfill the editorial calendar of monthly columns. I report to a senior editorial team that is chosen biannually. Find the series here: https://had.aas.org/resources/astro-history.

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

 

I developed a style guide for HAD’s TMIAH. (Use endnotes not footnotes. The ampersand is not a word.) For AAS writing, the foundation is the style guide of the American Physical Society. However, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar amended that when he served as editor of the Astrophysical Journal (1952-1971). That perturbing force sent the AAS into a different path. Just for one example, we do not require that manuscripts be submitted in TeX/LaTeX.

 

A.T.A. Type Comparison Book by Frank Merriman.
Advertising Typographers Association of American, Inc. 1965.

I learned Donald Knuth’s programming language for typesetting mathematics publications back in 1985 when I was taking computer classes and teaching technical writing at Lansing Community College. The Arts and Sciences Division acquired a DEC VAX 11/785 and interactive terminals, overcoming the objections of the Business Division with their IBM 360 mainframe and punched cards in Cobol and RPG. I served as the editor of the newsletter of the DECUS chapter. I then worked as a technical writer for a medical information firm whose previous technical writer had the insight to acquire TeX. Consequently, I have almost 40 years of experience with HTML.

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Start the Presses! 

Art & Copy 

Art as Ordered Narrative 

Innovation and Discovery 

For the Glory of Old Lincoln High