too wide margins,
dazzles and offends the eye with its excess of white. The typesetting
machines have also militated against beauty by requiring that every
letter shall stand within the space of its own feet or shoulders. Thus
the lowercase f and y and the uppercase Q are shorn of their due
proportions. These are points that most readers do not notice, but they
are essential, for the type of the book beautiful must not be deformed
by expediency. On the other hand, it need not be unusual; if it is, it
must be exceptionally fine to pass muster at all. The two extremes of
standard roman type, Caslon and Bodoni, are handsome enough for any book
of prose. One may go farther in either direction, but at one's risk. For
poetry, Cloister Oldstyle offers a safe norm, from which any wide
departure must have a correspondingly strong artistic warrant. All these
three types are beautiful, in their letters themselves, and in the
combinations of their letters into lines, paragraphs, and pages.
Beautiful typography is the very foundation of the book beautiful.

But beautiful typography involves other elements than the cut of the
type itself. The proofreading must be trained and consistent, standing
for much more than the mere correction of errors. The presswork must be
strong and even. The justification must be individual for each line, and
not according to a fixed scale as in machine setting; even when we hold
the page upside down, we must not be able to detect any streamlets of
white slanting across the page. Moreover, if the page is leaded, the
spacing must be wider in proportion, so that the color picture of the
rectangle of type shall be even and not form a zebra of black and white
stripes. It is hardly necessary to say that the registration must be
true, so that the lines of the two pages on the same leaf shall show
accurately back to back when one holds the page to the light. Minor
elements of the page may contribute beauty or ugliness according to
their handling: the headline and page number, their character and
position; notes marginal or indented, footnotes; chapter headings and
initials; catch-words; borders, head and tail pieces, vignettes,
ornamental rules. Even the spacing of initials is a task for the skilled
craftsman. Some printers go so far as to miter or shave the type-body of
initials to make them, when printed, seem to cling more closely to the
following text. Indenting, above all in poetry, is a feature strongly
a