THE OLD SCHOOL PRESS

Moments in the making of The Colours of Rome.

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Juggling the type

When the type is ready I collect it together with three sets of galley proofs. I now know that each page will have thirty-four lines and a heading will count as five. I go through one copy of the galley proofs, counting off lines and marking where page breaks fall. Murphy’s Law says that a page will end with the first part of a hyphenated word. I can’t have that.  So now the juggling starts. I might be able to take up a line or push one out – though of course that must not be as obvious and nasty-looking as a word breaking over a page-turn. And I'll get rid of widows and orphans, like this one. Backwards and forwards I go until finally I have paginated the entire text.