Many here probably already know about this, but Notes and Queries - in the Guardian and online - can be both hilarious and informative, and provide a forum for you to show off your knowledge!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/0,5753,184276,00.html
Probably the most relevant would be the Semantic Engimas section, but the rest are also cool.

Great site alexis!! Thank you for sharing.

I did go to the semantic enigmas page and though I dont know about why the letters are arranged so on a computer keyboard, I might have something on the old typewriters. I do believe I learnt about 'etaoin shrdlu' (hi eta!) in the Phrontistery site (or was it Quinion?). The old typesetters had the letters arranged as 'etaoin shrdlu' because these letters were the most commonly used letters in the language. And now, the phrase translates into gobbledygook.

The old typesetters had the letters arranged as 'etaoin shrdlu' because these letters were the most commonly used letters in the language.
Not quite. The Linotype keyboards are set up different from typewriters. The typesetters would occasionaly make a mistake and would run finger across the keys and up would pop 'etaoin shrdlu' in the cast column of type - the typesetters eye was trained to spot the phrase and they could locate the error easily and remove it. The Linotype - invented by Mergenthaler - is from the days of "hot type" and isn't seen too much anymore.The print was clearer and pages looked better (said the old hot type & press reporter with a sigh.) I know The Lowell SUN and (I think) The New York Times still have hot type presses.
http://mmd.foxtail.com/Archives/Digests/199712/1997.12.07.16.html Don't yell at me I tried Makeashorterlink but it didn't give me one although it said it had been created. I dunno'
Anyways - this link is a forum and has displayes an entry re Linotype machines. They guy writing the entry has one in his garage! Or you can Dogpile "Merganthaler+Linotype" and get entries - one of which has a photo of a Linotype
Have fun.

hmm. my ears are burning...

Thanks a bunch, wow! I never did quite understand that very well. And words like, linotype and typesetter sat in some dark, cobwebby recess of my brain till I read your post. Went to your link (the author writes it as 'eatoin'; likely a spelling error), and then googled, to find this marvellously informative page. Do read on...

http://pages.prodigy.net/jabeckpearce/poor_town/tales/etaoinshrdlu.htm
And no, your link didn't send my page wide. I hope this doesn't. That snurl thing simply doesn't work for me

Thanks for that link, maahey! Refreshed my memories of days long gone. I was about six-years-old when I was first given my name in hot lead....and it was hot!
I later days I got a bit smarter - my family being a newspaper family I was put wise to a few tricks. i.e. : when I went to work as a reporter I did not lean over the blocks of type to see if it was infested with "type lice" and get squirted with printer's ink as the case was locked!
Nor did I go out looking for a left handed monkey wrench!
By the 1940s even the dumbest newcomer realized there was no such thing as "a bucket of steam."
By the way, printer's ink couldn't be washed off! You had to wait for it to fade away.
Ah, the good old days.

re: "a bucket of steam."


and an early 'activity' of computer nerds, especially when de-bugging a bit of hardware, was to 'empty the bit bucket'

(ziff davis, a technical publisher, offered real bit buckets as a promo for subscribing to one of their PC magazines) they were 'half buckets" (semi circular) and designed to mount to a cubicle wall, or to sit on a desk and be used a pen jar.)

The bit bucket was where the bits that disappeared off one end or the other of a word in a non-circular shift (right or left) or if there was an overflow or underflow due to an arithmetic operation of one sort or another. Overflows were errors but underflows were, IIRC, normal losses of least significant bits. Underflow bits could clog up the bit bucket just as well as any other kind of bit, though.

I did an apprenticeship in machine typography - a lost art and a pretty worthless one in terms of job security these days!

Here's a link to a picture of Mk III - I learned on one of these for a couple of months, and this was in 1973. The one I learned on was over 80 years old:

http://www.bacchus-marsh.com/files/linotype.jpg

Pretty snazzy, huh?

Since the lino went the way of the dino, just about the only contact I've had with them is when one has been chattering away in some museum-type situation. Generally the person operating it hasn't got the foggiest idea of how they work and has either front- or back-splashed it (things not lined up properly; molten metal in all directions). On at least three occasions in the past ten years or so I've wound up cleaning up a lino in one of these museum print shops, oiling the damned thing, greasing the cam axle, graphiting the disser bar and the spacebands, tightening up or replacing belts, repairing the magazine, cleaning the pot throat and then spending the rest of the day happily churning out people's names back to front. I'm sure they were backsplashed again the next day ...

They were a really clever piece of kit. The Mergs were always more forgiving than the Intertypes. I've sent lines away on a Merg which cast okay which on the Intertype would have resulted in a bang and a fountain of molten type metal (which is lead, zinc and antimony, not just lead) coming up behind the mold wheel. As an apprentice, I used to have to cast the "pigs", the long skinny ingots of type metal which hung above the pot on a hook and were lowered into the pot by a ballcock arrangement pretty much the same as in your privy's cistern. A piecework operator could get through ten of them in a shift, and that's a lot of metal.

A number of newspapers have one or two of them in operating condition to show visitors, but they are becoming rarer as the people who knew how to operate them retire. It's a shame that it's come to this, but that's the way things go I guess.

Whew--that thing looks pretty complicated to me, CK. Glad I don't have to try and figure one out. A "disser bar"--interesting name! Explain if you have time, please.

becoming rarer as the people who knew how to operate them retire. It's a shame that it's come to this, but that's the way things go I guess.
Yep--same for steam locomotives, Crays (hi, tsuwm), or--what were early build-it-yourself radio kits called?--quartz radio, maybe? And that's just some things that have been in use in our lifetimes. Who among us could operate a crank telephone; or a crank car, for that matter? Bingley's scytalas certainly seem to have gone out of use!

A "disser bar"--interesting name! Explain if you have time, please.

When a line of type has been cast, the matrices which formed it - the individual letter matrices and spacebands - have to be "put back" where they came from so that they can be reused. This is carried out by the distribution (disser) system. The best thing to do is to have a look at this link:

http://www.woodsidepress.com/LINOTYPE.HTML

The pictures are very good, and they and the text will do better than I can.

When I said "retired", I meant "have died". Most of the operators I knew are now well planted.

Hey, thanks; that cleared things up to where I know that I don't know s--t about linotype machines! I have lots more questions, but I guess they aren't really appropriate for here. BUT--(yep, there always is one, isn't there?) I did find the term "Justifying Spacebands", and that reminded me of what to me is an unusual use of the word justify. To me, justification is the giving of reasons for something. For ex., I justified making this post by asking about a word. I've never known, really, why the term is used to mean how words are spaced on a page, or screen.

Oh, heck--I have to put my main question, anyway.(!) I had sort of thought that a linotype machine does actual printing. I was very surprised to read that lines are cast into metal! Are these, er, slugs if I got the term right, then taken somewhere else, and laid out somehow so that pages can be printed from them? And, are they recycled?

an unusual use of the word justify

Every time you use your word processor you use justify in exactly that sense.

The standard format is "left-justified:" all lined up at the left margin. You can make it all line up at the right margin instead if you want to (right-justified), or center every line (center-justified), by clicking on a "button" on a menu bar, or perhaps by the older method of highlighting some text and then typing control-R, control-L, or control-E (as in cEnter).

When linotype machines were in use, or even earlier when type was set by hand (anyone remember the California job case?), you had to put in spacers to make all the lines come out the same length. There would be spacers between words or letters, and also between lines and paragraphs, for horizontal and vertical justification, so that the type would one rectangular block that could be set into the printing press. See our previous discussion of "coigns," by whichever spelling!

Actually we still do this, even with computerized typesetting. That's what's responsible for the all-too-frequent funny-looking appearance in your daily newspaper when they had to use a lot of spacers for long words in short lines.

an unusual use of the word justify

Every time you use your word processor you use justify in exactly that sense.

Yeahbut®, why the word justify? You don't have to justify why you want the text lined up in a particular way--you just do it. You set it. You align it. You make it even. You make it match. Etc., etc., etc.
If your boss questions your judgment, you might have to justify why you've set it a certain way, but I still don't see why the word justify came to be used in reference to lining up text.

why the word justify?

I think you probably just need to adjust your etmylogical alignment here, aJ ;)

"I once ate a mology".

Oh boy, Jackie! Whew! Where to start.
To make it easy just think of justify/justification as newspaper jargon.
The columns of type set on a linotype were put into page-size cases and the page was laid out in those cases with headlines, photos (steel engravings)included by a make-up man (all men in my day.) As a beginning reporter I sometimes checked the Women's Pages as they were being made up. If there was a story in type that didn't fit the page the story was cut by removing the type from the bottom of the story. Hence the typical pyramid style of news writing :the most important information in first graph, exposition following in order of precedence. After the page was made up the form was locked and sent off to the printers.
Sometimes if a line was a tiny bit short - to make it all nice and justified - or to avoid a ridiculous hypenation - a slim piece of metal was placed to space out the words. These small pieces of metal are called (letter) spacers.
It was fine to letterspace regular type but a big no-no for italic letter. Hence the sign seen in many old makeup areas :
"He who would letterspace italics would steal sheep."
Hi CapK!
Oh, and just to keep it interesting for whomever was checking the pages, the page faced the make-up man so the reporter/editor had to "read" the page upside down and backwards!
This skill has come in very handy now and then!
I went to an ATEX school when we first went to computers in newspapers and about two days in to the course I was ready to cry with frustration but was saved by two Scots who were there to learn the whole system ... when they learned that I had worked in hot type they explained a computer builds bfrom the bottom up just like when the lead was pouring into letter forms.
Now, is that more than you needed to know?
Aloha!

Ok, thanks; now I know that a linotype machine doesn't do the actual printing. hot type Hot, because of the molten metal, I'll bet.
But I still don't see the need to use the word justify, when all it's talking about is how to arrange the print.

>But I still don't see the need to use the word justify, when all it's talking about is how to arrange the print.


You spoilin' for a glory there, Mrs F.?

>But I still don't see the need to use the word justify, when all it's talking about is how to arrange the print.

oh boy, I hope I'm not too late. your problem, as I see it, is that you're trying to justify two somewhat disparate current senses of quite an old word. the original sense (a. 1300) of justify, from L. justificare (do justice to), was to try as a judge, to judge; to have jurisdiction over, rule, control, keep in order; to do justice to, treat justly -- this usage is now obsolete. not too much later (a. 1500) another sense was to make exact; to fit or arrange exactly; to adjust to exact shape, size, or position -- this sense is now used only technically; i.e., as type-founder's or printer's jargon. the connection between these senses seems a bit more clear: imposing control or order.

Spoilin' fer somethin', Mr. M, that's fer sure!

you're trying to justify two somewhat disparate current senses
tsuwm, c'mere a minute--I have something for you.

the connection between these senses seems a bit more clear: imposing control or order.
Ok, I get it now. Thanks!

Sigh--I predict that one of these days, this particular new word will make it into dictionaries: I cannot tell you how many times I have metathesized thanks into thnaks.

tsuwm to the rescue yet once again! Hoo-Ah... and a big Thank You!from me, too!

or is that the complete line on this family of words?

As I was hinting in my earlier post, it's possible there has been etymylogical confusion over the years between the two L roots of adjuxtare (to put side by side) from which we get adjust, and justus (right). Howsowhomwhichever, the common thread between the printing jargon and the more normal usage is clearly to do with adjustment or making right.

When linotype machines were in use, or even earlier when type was set by hand (anyone remember the California job case?), you had to put in spacers to make all the lines come out the same length. There would be spacers between words or letters, and also between lines and paragraphs, for horizontal and vertical justification, so that the type would one rectangular block that could be set into the printing press.

You can still get letterpress type hand and machine set. There are specialist firms that do it. The main customers are people who want that "printed" look, blurs and overimpression and all.

I was using a California case as late as 1975. Actually, it referred to the layout of the type within the case rather than the case itself, but hey, who's worried? You had three basic space units: Ems, ens and thins. The Em was the same width as a capital M in the font being used. The En was half the width of the Em and the thin was actually an abritrary width. We also had variations around the En - thin area. There were quite strict rules about handset justification which spilled over into machineset justification. All thrown out with the advent of the word processor, of course. Most printing, in all areas, is absolute rubbish today in terms of quality, but even I'm beginning not to notice any more. It's not a losing battle, it's been lost, game, set and match.

not a losing battle, it's been lost

Reminds me of the lovely sign in a printshop:

"You can have the job done quick, cheap or right - pick two!"

Hope this isn't a yart, er, I mean gert :)