Nick

A hollow, east crosswise in the shank of the types, to enable the compositor when composing to perceive readily the bottom of the letter as it lies in the case, as the nicks are always cast on that side of the shank on which the bottom of the face is placed.

In ordinary news type, printers should be careful to stipulate that the nick of each fount should be different, more especially founts of the same body; for a great deal of inconvenience frequently arises, owing to the founders casting different founts of type with a similar nick in each. Although this may, at the first sight, appear of little moment, yet it is attended with much trouble; and works are frequently disfigured with it, notwithstanding all the care of the compositor and the reader.

For instance, where the nicks are similar, a compositor, in distributing head lines, lines of Italic, small capitals, or small jobs—in the hurry of business—through inadvertency—or carelessness—frequently distributes them into wrong cases, when it is almost impossible for another compositor who has occasion to use these cases next, to detect the error till he sees the proof; unless he is in the habit of reading his lines in the stick, which many are not. He has then a great deal of trouble to change the letters; and, with all the attention that the reader can bestow, a letter of the wrong fount will frequently escape his eye, and disfigure the page. Even in founts that are next in size to each other; for instance,—Bourgeois and Long Primer, Long Primer and Small Pica, Small Pica and Pica, and Pica and English, head lines, &c., are not unfrequently distributed into wrong cases, where the nick is the same; which always occasion loss of time in correcting the mistakes, and sometimes pass undiscovered. By going as far as three or four nicks, a sufficient variety may be obtained to distinguish one fount from another without hesitation.

A single nick may be used in the centre or at the foot of the shank; but we decidedly object to the single nick, or, in fact, any nick being at the top of the shank, and are glad that it is not frequently adopted. Compositors have become so accustomed to the nick being at the lower part of the shank, that in composing type with the nick at the top, they can scarcely help (let them be ever so careful) having some of the letters topsy-turvy. Where there are a great number of founts, it would add to the distinguishing mark, if consisting of more than one nick, that one of them should be cast shallow; but where there is only one nick, it ought always to be cast deep. In Russia, Poland, and in some parts of Germany, the nick is placed on the reverse side of the letter, viz., the back of the type, it being considered by the printers of those countries an advantage to them in composing.