Page:The practice of typography - a treatise on the processes of type-making, the point system, the names, sizes, styles and prices of plain printing types by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914.djvu/17

 who are expert in two or three of these departments, but the ordinary workman has knowledge and practice in one department only. Punch-cutting is the first process, which must be preceded by a careful drawing of the characters. No operation in typography requires more skill than this, and in none is error more disastrous. The modern punch-cutter is not fettered by arbitrary rules: he does not conform to the models devised by Albert Dürer, nor those subsequently made by French theorists in type-founding. He is at liberty to design characters that may be taller or broader, thicker or thinner, than any heretofore made, but he is required to make all the characters of a full font uniform as to style, so as to show perfect correlation. The characters must seem uniform as to height, line, stroke, serif, curve, and angle; they should be in proper relative proportion as to size, and as to nearness and distance in all combinations. The beauty of text-types is in their precision. That freedom of drawing which is permitted, and some-