Why we strive

Keyboarding at 10,000 or more characters per hour is bound to result in appallingly bad composition, and an incentive system which encourages this by increasing the weekly wage packet in inverse ratio to the quality of the output, is not only pernicious, but for the keyboard operator, totally demoralizing.

And typsetting standards will continue to decline unless the typographer, who has taken over duties formerly the craftsman-compositor’s (the composition or arrangement of types as distinct from the setting of them), is prepared to do constant battle for high standards of design & of workmanship.

— Geoffrey Dowding,
Finer Points in the Spacing and Arrangement of Type, 1966

Why we strive

Keyboarding at 10,000 or more characters per hour is bound to result in appallingly bad composition, and an incentive system which encourages this by increasing the weekly wage packet in inverse ratio to the quality of the output, is not only pernicious, but for the keyboard operator, totally demoralizing.

And typsetting standards will continue to decline unless the typographer, who has taken over duties formerly the craftsman-compositor’s (the composition or arrangement of types as distinct from the setting of them), is prepared to do constant battle for high standards of design & of workmanship.

— Geoffrey Dowding,
Finer Points in the Spacing and Arrangement of Type, 1966