Spurrell Improved Upper Case

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This English layout is given by Southward: Practical Printing (1882) as Spurrell's improved lay. Southward also shows a Provincial and a Times and another Improved lay, as well as the Old lay. The equivalent lower is Spurrell Lower. The main improvement is moving the caps and small caps into the bottom rows, to be nearer the compositor's hand, and also reducing the chance of accidents if the case is drawn out too far.

The boxes with A, etc are small caps. The Welsh accented letters ³ should be y with a grave accent, ^ y with a circumflex and ² should be a w with grave accent and ¹ w with circumflex. Note that this lay has the numerals in the Lower case, but the ligatures in the Upper case. The Welsh sorts may be replaced by braces, rules, Per, lb, etc or any special sort required, and superiors or fractions may occupy the accent boxes.

The empty configuration is that of Moxon, and Smith, (1755), Luckombe (1771), Stower (1804), Johnson (1824), Miller & Richard (1873), Southward (1882), Mackellar (1885), Barnhart Bros & Spindler's News (1890s), Stephenson Blake & Co (1922), Caslon (1925) etc.

Other empty cases ie with the boxes left blank		Other type layouts ie with characters assigned to boxes
Full Index of layouts	Glossary of terms used	Sources of the layouts	Introduction
Quantities in a fount of type		Quantities in a case of type
Notes about Job and Double Cases	Notes about Upper cases	Notes about Lower cases	Alembic home page

This page was written in 1998 by David Bolton and last updated 25 April 2015.