Words Unravelled - video

[Dave Hughes]

I stumbled across this Words Unravelled podcast episode which looks at printing terminology.

The presenters seem quite knowledgeable and I didn't spot any glaring errors, unlike the phrases highlighted in this Forum thread: Printing Phrases - A Dab Hand - video

Here's a couple of things I hadn't heard of before:

Books were called a Caxton in the UK?

Compositors referred to printers as pigs, and the press room a pig sty?

Cock-robin shop was a name for a small printing shop

Overall the video seems interesting and well thought out:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd5iFbuNKv8

In this printing special of Words Unravelled, Jess proves herself a font of knowledge on names for typefaces and Rob makes a big impression with the history of the printing press.

🆎 What's the difference between a font and a typeface?
😈 Who was the printer's devil?
📖 How did the printing press ruin English spelling?

These questions answered — and many more — in this cliché-free episode of Words Unravelled.

[Paul W. Nash]

Very interesting. The Society for the Explosion of Mythological Typographical Terminology will be listening carefully ... If a Society can listen ...

[Paul W. Nash]

In the previous post, the Directors of the Society got their own name wrong. It is, of course, the Society for the Explosion of Mythological Typographical Expressions ... Otherwise, it cannot be SEMTEX.

I have listened to the podcast now, and it is good; there are many good points made and, once or twice, I fancied I could hear my own words coming back to me.

Have I taught one of these presenters at some point? I don't remember doing so ... There are a few errors, and I doubt the veracity of both "Out of Sorts" and "Mind your Ps and Qs", even though they appear in Jacobi's book (but with a different meaning from the common one).

But overall, I give Jess and Rob eight out of ten!