Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/89

 d greatly,

not only because of the scarcity of news of the various towns, but more frequently because of the scarcity of paper. In spite of his meager equipment the colonial printer seldom found it necessary, even when he gave his reader two whole sheets, to use more than one variety of type. Newspapers, however, varied much in their style of typography. One distinctive mechanical characteristic of the colonial newspaper was the frequent use of a large initial letter for the leading news item or essay. From the beginning of the printed newspaper in this country down to the time when Franklin gave up writing for his newspaper, all nouns were capitalized, and it seemed gen- erally permissible to capitalize any other word, at the printer's discretion. Extracts from colonial newspapers have been given frequently enough in the preceding pages to give the reader a fairly accurate idea of the orthography of the period. Some edi- tors, usually of other birth than English, evidently compiled a dictionary of their own for office use. John Peter Zenger, for example, invariably spelled "Monday" in his date line, "Mun- day," but frequently allowed contributors to spell the word "Monday."

PRESSES AND INKS

In the tools of his trade the colonial printer was under a severe handicap. Both press and type had to be imported from England, and in many instances the printer because of his pov- erty had to purchase second-hand outfits. Such presses as were used were built practically of wood, and were often so con- structed that only one page of even the small-sized colonial news- paper could be printed at one time. This handicap made four pulls necessary on the part of the printer before he could pro- duce a printed newspaper of a whole sheet. Even in the case of the larger presses, two impressions were necessary for every copy of the paper. In other words, the output of a press was equal to one half the number of pulls a printer could give in an hour. It took so much muscular strength to pull the lever of the old-fashioned press that the services of a man were required. The only help a boy could be in the colonial print-shop was to ink the type : this he did, in many instances, with the help of a