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Dear Capital Kiwi, Ahhh, so good to know there's a kindred spirit out there. When I had an idea about how a feature could be laid out I was instructed to "go talk to the guys in makeup." Starting out in hot type and being on the rotation to make up pages I worked with type that was upside down and backwards to me ! (You're smiling and nodding, aren't you?) It was not easy to learn to read that way but a very handy skill for a reporter.  I can still remember the relief when the chases were locked and the forms were ready to go. Whew! It was only the kindness and generosity of "the guys in makeup" that I didn't make more of a fool of myself in the early day than I did.  wow
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Welcome to the Board, Faldage. Those of us who've been around here for a while have given up on trying to find any rhyme or reason in the spell-checker here, pretty much putting up with it like one might do with a strange relative at family reunions and now call it (affectionately) Ænigma. It does provide some excellent laughs at times, as you have witnessed.
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Wow wrote: In reply to:
Ahhh, so good to know there's a kindred spirit out there. When I had an idea about how a feature could be laid out I was instructed to "go talk to the guys in makeup."
Starting out in hot type and being on the rotation to make up pages I worked with type that was upside down and backwards to me ! (You're smiling and nodding, aren't you?) It was not easy to learn to read that way but a very handy skill for a reporter. I can still remember the relief when the chases were locked and the forms were ready to go. Whew! It was only the kindness and generosity of "the guys in makeup" that I didn't make more of a fool of myself in the early day than I did.
Ah, reporters and editors. The bane of our existence as printers. Saving your grace, most of them were abysmally ignorant of the English language (or any other that I could discern). I was a machine typographer (linotype machines) and I seemed to spend half my life trotting upstairs to the sub editors' office to argue the toss over yet another literary abuse of the language.
Interestingly, the tray into which the type slugs (lines of type) dropped when they were cast is/was called the "composing stick" - or "stick" for short. Not a compositing in sight. Them were the days, constant headaches and a constant general malaise from incipient lead poisoning.
Yes, being able to read pages upside down and back to front has been very useful ever since. I can stand in front of my boss' desk and read the papers in front of him ... so obviously being an ex newspaper jockey is an essential requirement for any self-respecting spy!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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I think I may have erred in stating that compositing may have been a backformation of compositor. In thinking about it it seems more likely that it is a backformation from the adjective composite, because compositing means taking two images and making a composite of them.
As to the printing compositor, the OED has it as the third definition, after (believe it or not) one who is an arbiter and one who composes or compiles a literary work.
And interestiongly enough, there is composititious meaning of a composed or made-up sort.
I had scurried to the OED, which I am forced to keep at home, because I wondered if compositor in the typing sense might not be a combination of compose and deposit. Nope. Comes from the same root as the other compose words.
Note that composit means to place or put together. a type compositor definitely does that.
TEd
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TEd Remington wrote: Note that composit means to place or put together. a type compositor definitely does that.
Ooooh, yes indeedy. In the days of hot type (was it really only twenty years ago?), you composed pages from their constituent galleys of type, plus lots of metal rules, space slugs and photolitho plates. All rather tame these days. And they call it paste-up and "anyone" can do it. Printing has clearly come to a sticky end!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Thanks, Anna
As the more perceptive of you may have noticed, I tend to, in the words of the immortal Walt Kelly, run with the language. Since I also tend to have bad attacks of fumble fingers, I make judicious use of spell-checkers; if I misspell a word it is with malice aforethought and with insidious intent and I do not wish to do so unintentionally.
One of my favorite games is to take a sentence with a large number of wrong-word homophones and, after determining that all the words pass the spell-checker, feed it to a grammar-checker.
Oh, good! It didn't like spell-checkers.
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It didn't like spell-checkers
...witch is hardly surprising
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It doesn't work here either. Is there no extended ASCII?
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A Bug's Life even had an out-take that was an homage to Toy Story.
Not an out-take but there was a follow up scene in the closing credits of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert that tasted very good.
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Was that what you were referring to - Alt+0198?
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