News Upper Case

áéíóúç*ABCDEFG
àèìòù{¦HIKLMNO
ä âë êï îö ôü û--¦¦ PQRSTVW
XYZAEOEUJXYZAEOEUJ
1234567ABCDEFG
890$...7/8£HIKLMNO
  1/4    1/2    3/4    1/8    3/8    5/8    k     P    Q    R    S    T    V    W  

This English type lay is given by Jacobi: Printing (5th ed 1913 and 6th ed 1919) as that used by the leading London daily papers. Essentially, it has removed the long s ligatures from the earlier Upper No.2 of Smith (1755), and then moved the A to W boxes from top left to bottom right, swapping with the rows of accents and signs. This puts the capitals nearer to the compositor's hand. The rows with X to J, 1 to 7, and A to J (small caps) remain unaltered. The ä etc. are merged with â etc. to empty a row for the fractions. There are no hairs or ligatures in the case, but note that k is still here. 2 em rule (shown as --), £ and braces are added to the case, but although the single (shown as ¦) and double (shown as ¦¦) daggers are included, the § and ¶ are omitted. The 1 em rule (dash) is in the Lower case.

The lay can be compared with Mackie's News Upper of 1882, and the Provincial News Upper of 1882, where the small capitals have been brought down to the bottom left and accents are omitted, and to the Times Upper of 1882, where the capitals are still in the top rows.

The companion Lower lay is Jacobi's News Lower and the empty case configuration is that of Moxon (1683), 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 layoutsGlossary of terms usedSources of the layoutsIntroduction
Quantities in a fount of typeQuantities in a case of type
Notes about Job
and Double Cases
Notes about Upper casesNotes about Lower casesAlembic home page

This page was written in 2004 by David Bolton and last updated 26 February 2004.