Alphabet (letterpress)
In letterpress printing , the printed sheets of a book were designated with the letters of the alphabet until around the 19th century .
Since the modern letters J, U and W were left out, a complete sheet alphabet consisted of the 23 sheets ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVX YZ . It was therefore said that a book had one or more alphabets depending on its size . With a sheet length of 16 pages, for example, such an alphabet corresponded to 16 (pages) × 23 (sheets) = 368 pages.
The census in alphabets became particularly well-known when strict censorship regulations were issued in some German states in the 19th century , from which, however, particularly extensive works were excluded, as it was assumed that only wealthy buyers could buy them anyway and not the poor people. which was supposed to be 'protected' from revolutionary ideas by censorship. Now many authors tried to achieve the required minimum of 1, 2 or more alphabets by compiling many texts into one volume, large print or other means in order to avoid censorship. The best-known example is Heinrich Heine , who, in his travel pictures , for example, expressly makes fun of this obligation to extend books. In the later course of the book, essential differences to earlier letterpress printing processes are explained, including Johannes Gutenberg's artistic designs for printing.