Almost an alphabet

Over the two 12-week semesters of this academic year, SC&A will be putting up a weekly blog post, working through from A to Z, to demystify some of the specialist words we use in cataloguing our printed books. Each term will be illustrated and explained using examples from our medieval to 21st century collections.

24 weeks for the whole alphabet? Don’t worry about our maths – or that there’s a secret week 13 – the printer’s alphabet is made up of only 23 letters. Find out why in week 1 at Manuscripts and more. And if there’s a word that puzzles you that you’d like explained, let us know – ask us when you’re in classes taught in Special Collections & Archives, when you come to the SC&A reading room, or by emailing us at scastaff@liverpool.ac.uk and we’ll try to include it in the series.