"These complications will tend to keep interactive terminals employed for page make-up and with soft-copy proofs on page view terminals." [Arthur Phillips, Tabular Composition, Seybold Report, August 1979, v8, n23, pg. 23-11]

"It would be asking rather a lot of a page make-up program to insert carried forward and brought-forward totals automatically at a table break, and indeed these were often omitted when tables were made-up by the hand compositor" [Arthur Phillips, Tabular Composition, Seybold Report, August 1979, v8, n23, pg. 23-11] [referring to the introduction of continued lines at points where table columns are broken]

"While many tables of physical and scientific data are being compiled by computer, there is still a requirement to include these data in technical publications because they are considered of interest to the reader who may not have access to the generating algorithms even if he is a computer user. The publication of such data in printed form may also be considered necessary to establish the status of the author! It would appear that the need for tabular composition in general bookwork will continue for some time." [Arthur Phillips, Tabular Composition, Seybold Report, August 1979, v8, n23, pg. 23-15]

"typographic quality is defined by several considerations which are a combination of technical and psychological factors. Most important of these are the choice of typeface, the point size, the use of upper and lower case, the alternation of type faces, and skillful use of the ratio of text to white space surrounding it." [Sparks, et al, 1964, p 161, quoted in Automatic Typographic-Quality Typesetting Techniques: A State-of-the-Art Review]

Janus, the Roman god of gates and doorways, depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions. [Am. Her. Dict]

JACM copyeditor felt threatened when Bell Labs was trying to prepare camera-ready pages. First samples came back all covered with red marks. The copyeditor retired shortly thereafter and the situation improved. Mike Lesk built several macro packages for JACM, CACM, and conference paper formats. Papers were often published three times as an internal memorandum, an technical report and then in a journal. Noted the project for American Physical Review Letters. [Steve Johnson, Bell Labs]

"To lay down rules of style would be easy enough — we need only consider how things were done yesterday, or how they are done today, or how we prefer to do them ourselves, and to elevate these practices or preferences to the status of dogma" [Hugh Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 2]

"The practice of typography, if it be followed faithfully, is hard work — full of detail, full of petty restrictions, full of drudgery, and not greatly rewarded as men now count rewards. There are times when we need to bring to it all the history and art and feeling that we have, to make it bearable. But in the light of history, and of art, and of knowledge, and of man's achievement, it is as interesting a work as exists — a broad and humanizing employment which can indeed be followed merely as a trade, but which if perfected into an art, or even broadened into a profession, will perpetually open new horizons to our eyes and new opportunities to our hands." [Daniel Berkeley Updike, Printing Types, 1922, quoted by Hugh Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 4]

"Every item in the book gains in appeal to the reader's eye from its relationship with all the other items. Something of a family resemblance, an appearance of being a set of pictures rather than a collection from disparate sets, may confer this advantage on the illustrations of any edition." [Hugh Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 256]

"When the author's contract stipulates that he is to supply illustration copy, he may choose to draw it himself or get it drawn by somebody else whose main qualification for the task is that he will make no charge for it, or next to none. The resulting material may be clear enough to explain its meaning but incapable of adequate reproduction or too irregular in drawing to appear in a well-produced book." [Hugh Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 258]

"On the whole, varying spaces within a standard area of illustration are less disconcerting than varying margins, and variations of space at the head of the page are more conspicuous than variations at the foot. In the same way, extra space at the head of a text page usually means a new chapter, and the first text line of succeeding pages should be occupied by something, whether text or illustration." [Hugh Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 263]

"The processes of book design may be classified as editorial planning (in which the text may be locally re-arranged if necessary in preparation for composition, for the benefit of author and reader), visual planning (which determines the appearance of the printed image), and technical planning (which is concerned with the structure of the book and the methods of its manufacture). The editorial and visual aspects of the design derive most of their effectiveness from technical planning. Success in one process or in one aspect alone is never enough; failure at one is more than enough." [Hugh Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 353]

"Tabular setting has proved both the easiest and the most difficult form of composition to bring under computer control. Because tabular setting is mainly for numeric data, it might seem strange that there should be any difficulty in providing computer-generated drive-tapes for photoset tables." [Arthur H. Phillips, Handbook of Computer-Aided Composition, p 189]

"Tabular material is always difficult to typeset—much more so than to compose on the typewriter. This is true even though figures have a "monospaced" value. Letters do not, and therefore it is more difficult to align material or even to determine what will fit in a given space . . . The monospaced typewriter—where you can actually visualize what you are setting—is certainly the simplest way for the novice to proceed. And it will not be an easy task for the typesetter to imitate what the typist has done." [Seybold, Fundamentals of Photocomposition, p 14]

"But there are really two very different categories of tabular composition: One comprises a book of similar tables in which the values shown can be calculated by program algorithms from the minimum of data input, and the other consists of the tables appearing in technical texts. In the first case the style is similar for many consecutive pages, but in the second case each table, and there are sometimes several tables on the same page, has different column widths, different numbers of columns, and also ranges the entries differently, both vertically and horizontally; in addition, each table may have different complex box headings." [Arthur H. Phillips, Handbook of Computer-Aided Composition, p 189]

"The significance of this early work in tabular composition is that all the typographic parameters were defined by program." [Arthur H. Phillips, Handbook of Computer-Aided Composition, p 195]

"ta-ble n. 13. An orderly written, typed, or printed display of data, especially a rectangular array exhibiting one or more characteristics of designated entities or categories. 14. An abbreviated list, as of contents; a synopsis. [Am. Her. Dictionary]

"The principles of table making involve matters of taste, convention, typography, aesthetics, and honesty, in addition to the principles of quanitification." [Tabular Presentation, p 497]

"Tables offer authors and editors a useful means of presenting large amounts of detailed information in small space. A simple table . . . can often give information that would require several paragraphs to present textually and can do so with greater clarity. Tabular presentation is not simply the best but usually the only way that large quantities of individual, similar facts can be arranged." [A Manual of Style, Chicago, 1969, p 273]

"Ruled tables, for example, are usual in the publications of this press, in part because Monotype composition has always been readily available. For a publisher who is restricted to Linotype, open tables or tables with horizontal rules alone may be the only practical way tabular matter can be arranged." [Manual of Style, Chicago, 1969, p 273] [it would be interesting to compare the 13th edition on this suggestion!]

"Mathematics is known in the trade as difficult, or penalty, copy because it is slower, more difficult and more expensive to set in type than any other kind of copy normally occurring in books and journals." [Manual of Style, Chicago, 1969, p 295] [something similar appears in the EQN paper]

claim made by Kellogg Booth after viewing an exhibit of Blake's illustrations in Toronto.

Percentages in a two-dimensional table pose the problem of the direction in which they are to be computed. As a general rule per cents should be run in the direction of the variable which is to be studied for its effect. This cause- and-effect rule must not be applied if the sample is not representative in the "direction" in which per cents are to be run. If the total sample is representative, no particular problems arise. But sometimes the sample will be representative only for the subgroups; the proportion of the subgroups in the sample will not correspond to their proportions in the population. In this case results for the total sample may be obtained through proper weighting procedures. Never should a total column be presented that is merely the sum total of the breakdowns, without itself being representative of the total population. [Hans Leisel, Say It With Figures, p 41]

Only tables containing two variables can be presented in their entirety and still be clearly readable. Additional variables pose the problem of presenting three or more dimensions in a two-dimensional table. The problem can be solved by reducing one dimension to a single figure: a percentage, an average, a ratio or other figures may be taken to represent an entire column of figures. If tables contain more than three variables it is advisable to present these tables in separate sections. It will not do, however, to proceed with this presentation in some mechanical order; one will have to start out with the most general result, mostly the Total Column, and then add step by step the details which round out the picture. [Hans Leisel, Say It With Figures, p 90]

"if the only tool you have is hammer, the whole world tends to look like a nail" [Abraham Maslow]