Monotype typefaces


Monotype fonts were developed by the Monotype company. This name has been used by three firms. Two of them had their roots in "hot metal" or lead type in the printing industry. They could not adapt when the market changed as computer, offset and photographic systems became dominant. These were
A third firm produces fonts for computer use:
The latter firm is in a sense the successor to the English Monotype factory. It has the rights to the original designs, and later obtained rights to many more designs from other sources. The remains of the production archive and what is left of the machines are at the Type Museum in London, England. There the original matrices can still be accessed and parts of the old machines ordered. The collection itself is the property of the British Science Museum. The survival of the Type Museum is threatened since the building is no longer owned by the Science Museum, is in a very poor state of repair, and the new owner intends other uses for the property.

Hot metal

The first two firms mentioned above produced a long list of fonts, which were identified by names and serial numbers. That type design eventually acquired a very good name and the "Monotype" brand was synonymous with high quality and reliability.
In their name much typographic research on historical character designs from the early years of typography has been carried out. Many of the letters were produced as "revivals", including characters in Garamond, Baskerville, Bodoni, Bembo, Caslon and many other typefaces.
The major difference between the two firms is that the American fonts do not match the English fonts. Letters with the same name had in most cases a different designer, and their appearance and implementation differ. The identification numbers do not all correspond.
The matrices of the two firms also differ in terms of depth, the image inside the matrix, implementation, and size. For example, the American matrices are shallower by 0.025 mm, and consequently the interior of American foundry moulds need to be higher to produce characters with a type height of 23.3 mm. This was one of many measures taken by the two Monotype companies to divide the world market between themselves. For example, the Americans served the Americas and the Canadian markets. The British company, The Monotype Corporation Ltd. in Salfords, had many customers in India, Africa, and Asia. For these countries many non-Latin typefaces were created for printing in Hebrew, Javanese, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Thai, and other languages.
The composition-caster machines of the Monotype Corporation produced ready-to-use composed pages with text consisting of single pieces of type. The machine provided filled lines, justifying them by adding spaces of varying widths. These ending machines were controlled with a paper ribbon. Typing the texts on keyboards was manual work that took much more time than casting. A composition-caster needed the ribbons of at least three separate keyboards. Correction of the final composition was accomplished by simply replacing the moveable type. The lines did not to be recast, as with Linotype machines.
These composition-casters could produce type in sizes up to 14 point pica or Didot font width. "Large-composition" customized machines and moulds could provide composition up to 36 points. The matrices are correspondingly larger and there is room for only one alphabet in the die case. For this reason one machine-run could not provide composition in both Roman and italic typeface, so additional hand work was required in such cases.
Type for hand-composing was also cast with Monotype machines; all characters up to 36pt, and rules, could be cast on a large-composition machine. Another machine was the "super-caster" or "supra", which could cast single type. After conversion it could also be used to cast any material needed in print shops, including reglettes, ornaments, and similar designs, as well as characters up to 72 points. There were moulds with inserts for sizes 14 to 36 point. For the even larger sizes of 42, 48, 60 and 72 point another type cast was used. The machine had to be reconfigured for each different type requirement.

Unit arrangement

The width of the hot-lead Monotype type is expressed in units of a set. The widest letter in the alphabet, usually the capital "W", was measured in quarter-pica points, a unit being part of this width.
The unit width is calculated as follows for a 12-set example.
All character were designed to have widths a whole number of units of the set. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, up to 18 or even more.
.....
English and American manuals use a different size for the pica: the new-pica = 0.1660 inch. On the European mainland all wedges and tables in the manuals are based on the "old" pica = 0.1667 inch and those wedges can be identified by the extra capital E. That gives small differences in the tables in the various manuals. In practice, however, these differences are so small that they make only little difference when cast with a S5-E wedge or a S5 wedge based on the new-pica. All character are designed to have as width a whole number of units of the set.
So, for instance, A=14, B=13, C=14... a=8, b,d,h,k,n,p,q=10, c=8... The list with these widths is called the "unit-arrangement". Different fonts can have the same UA. In some font designs the unit-arrangement can be different for each point size, for example, with the Lutetia and some other fonts of Jan van Krimpen. These UAs are essential for the layout of the matrix case, in which the matrices are sorted into rows by the unit widths. The various "unit-arrangements" have been given numbers.

Long and short descenders

The letters g j p q y ij are descenders. In the italic typefaces f and the "long s" are also descenders.
Many of the older fonts were intended mainly for use in newspaper columns. Times New Roman is a good example, but there were many others. The descenders were kept as short as possible in such fonts so that all the text could be set with the same line spacing. However, for many fonts for luxury productions longer variants of the descenders were also available—the lining would usually need to be adjusted to accommodate them when casting.

Letterpress printing

The design of fonts for letterpress printing needs to be adjusted for this technique. The reason is that the type is printed with some force on the paper, pressing the ink on the type out to the edges of the letter. The center of the character is accordingly printed a bit lighter than the edges. This results in what is called a "bead edge". It is further enhanced because not only the surface of the type get inked, but also the bevels around it, which also contributes to the visual effect of the printed typeface, as can be readily seen with a magnifying glass.
The bead edge and bright centre in print suggest a calligraphic typeface. And with letterpress there is a much wider choice of suitable, often more expensive, paper types that can be printed.

Computer adjustments

After the "hot metal" firms ceased production because of the transition from letterpress to offset printing in more and more printing companies, with Lanston Monotype being the first to do so in America, the font designs needed adjustment for computer use. There is a difference compared with the old hot-metal characters since the fixed relationship between the width of the letters in the unit arrangement is often experienced as a disadvantage. Discussion of this problem has long been going on, for example by Jan van Krimpen.
The design of a lead type cannot be copied without some adjustments since the pressure on lead type during printing presses the ink sideways, and the final appearance of the letter on paper is wider than the surface of the lead character. This extra width is not the same at all places around the character. It depends on the paper surface used, the pressure, the type of press, whether cylinder or platten, and many other factors.
Many digital fonts from the early digital age have this characteristic defect. The metal surface was simply copied, the result being that the color of the printed pages is far too light. In offset or other modern printing techniques, the typeface on the plate and on the printed letter now match much more closely. The use of mostly coated papers with offset types also has an effect. During the type design process all this should be taken into account since simple design drawing of the surface of a lead letter without any adjustment for offset or computer printing will not produce a good result.

List of typefaces

The alphabetical list below refers primarily to the fonts produced by the English "hot metal" Monotype company. The numbers mentioned below are from the English "specimen-blades", four editions of the booklets "Monotype book of information", and some additional information from the London Type Museum.
In the 1960s many Monotype fonts were discontinued. The "patterns" for the originals from which the punches were created, the punches, and the whole stock of remaining matrices were destroyed. The font has disappeared except for the matrices in the possession of various printers. Sample sheets of these fonts are particularly difficult to find and are lacking in many collections.
A small number of American letter designs are added to the list, designated by "Am" and their number. American matrices differ from those in England. American matrices were 0.0025 mm less deeply engraved. Consequently, the American moulds were 0.0025 mm higher internally compared with moulds from the factory in Salfords UK. Consequently, American matrices on an English cast produce a low letter. English matrices on American moulds produce French-height type.
The list of computer letters from Monotype Imaging, Inc. is constantly being modified and can be best consulted on the website of the company.

Latin fonts

A

^ Fleet Titling

Amharic

Arabic

Armenian

Bangali

Burmese

Chinees

Coptic

Cyrillic

Devenagari

Gaelic

Georgian

Glagolitic

Greek

Gujerathi

Gurmukhi

Hebrew

Kannada

Malayalam

Old Bulgarian

Oriya

Sangalese

Syriac

Tamil

Telugu

Thai

Urdu