Distribution

nounStandard termPrinting

The act of returning individual pieces of metal type to their proper compartments in a typecase.

This is the cleanup phase in traditional hand typography where a printed form is broken down. The compositor takes a handful of type, reads a word or line at a time, and drops each character back into its designated box in the case.

Heard on the job

I spent the whole morning on distribution just to free up enough 12-point Garamond for the afternoon shift.