Gutenberg’s Inventions – Part 4: Composing stick and hand composition

The compositor has the task of putting the individual pieces of type together to form a text. At Gutenberg’s time, compositors were very educated, because they not only had to be able to read, but also to understand Latin. The many different special characters mentioned in the previous section also placed high demands on the compositor, who had to know how to use them correctly.
A text is typeset line by line. To do this, the compositor holds the so-called composing stick in one hand and with the other hand fetches the required sort from the type case. He has to be very careful because the letters are reversed and he has to insert them overhead into the composing stick. The sort have a notch for this purpose, the so-called nick, with the help of which the compositor can feel the correct alignment. When the line is almost full, he has to fill the spaces between the words with spacing material. Early composing sticks were probably made of wood and had a fixed width. Today, a composing stick is made of metal and the desired line width can be set in advance with a set screw.