PRINTING AND BOOKMAKING.
 

UNI
 

u
 

THE twenty-first letter in English. It is
not used as often as either of the other

IKD^I     P^i'6 vowels, and also several consonants,

iv^ ^h but many letters are also less frequent. It
is a little thicker than an en quadrat.
When overturned its chief difference from an n is that
the serifs are only at the right side of the perpendicular
bars instead of running completely across. Until the
second quarter of this century u and v were sometimes
classed as the same letter, and dictionaries would insert
Villiers as the next article after Uhland, instead of hav¬
ing all of the words beginning with U come first and
then all of the Y's. In the Middle Ages there was only
the one letter, with the two forms, acute and rounded,
and whether a word was written euer or ever, uery or
very, vse or use, signified little. As a consequence of
this confusion the upper case makes no allowance for
more than one letter in alphabetical order in this place,
the most common way in the second row being, P, Q,
R, S, T, Y, W, the U going at the end of the alphabet
as the twenty-sixth letter ; but in some offices the order
is T, U, W, and the Y going to the end. In the lower
case the u and v are alongside of each other. It is
much more common in monumental inscriptions, even
in English, to use the Y than the other form.

XJeberlaufen (Ger.).—To run over.

TJeberschlagen (Ger.).—To calculate or to cast up
manuscript; to determine the size of furniture necessary
for a form.

Uiias (Sp.).—Grippers of a cylinder-press.

Uncial.—A style of written character found in Latin
manuscripts from the third to the tenth centuries, which
combines the more ancient capital letters with the more
modern minuscule or small letters. This transitional
style of writing slowly altered into the easy, small, run¬
ning character, and in its most improved stages is known
as the semi-uncial. The minuscule began to prevail in
Latin manuscripts of the ninth century, and the Greek
of the tenth. This style of writing was formerly termed
unciales literse, or text letters, the word probably being
derived from the Latin word uncia, or an inch, descrip¬
tive of their large size.

Unclean.—A take in which there are many errors.
Thus used in England.

Uncut.—Untrimmed. This word, as applied to the
leaves of books, does not imply that the leaves have not
been opened, but simply that the plow or paper-cutter
has not been employed. Uncut books are more valuable
than cut ones, as their being in this condition shows
that they have not been handled so much and that their
margins are still liberal. The binder, in his effort to
make the edges even, cuts off' so much that the book is
generally considerably reduced in size.
^ Under Hand.—A phrase used by pressmen for the
light and easy or heavy and hard running-in of the car¬
riage of a hand-press. Thus they say that the press goes
light and easy under hand, or it goes heavy or hard
under hand.

Underlay.—That part of the process of making-
ready which consists in seeing that every part of the
 

form is of equal height, the letters touching the rollers
and the impression being even. This is accomplished
by laying pieces of paper under the low parts.

Under-Runners.—Continuation of side-notes run¬
ning under the foot of the page in a similar manner to a
foot-note.   This expression is little used.

Une Yen Pages.—Pages with odd folios, such as 1,
3, 5, &c. They are also called right-hand or recto pages.
In making up, an even and an uneven page always ac¬
company each other. The margin on thc outside of these
two pages is always wider than the margins between
the two.

Unfair Fonts.—Type in which the letters are very
thin, preventing a compositor from earning his usual
wages.    Almost all type is now thick.

Unfair Offices.—This term is applied by society or
union hands generally to those printing-offices where the
existing scale of prices is not recognized. Closed offices
are not necessarily unfair.

Ungathered.—Books delivered to binders in sheets^
that is, not gathered into books.

UninterleaYO.—To withdraw the sheets which have
been placed between printed work to prevent set-off.

Unit.—By the Benton system of regulating the width
of types a method of calculating so that each size can
be divided into fractions which shall also be fractions of
a pica em. Each of these sub-divisions is entitled a unit.
Twelve units of nonpareil may equal a pica, or seven of
small pica; all of the characters of a given font are
multiples of that unit. The composing-stick being set
to so many units, every line must either fill the measure
or fall short of it one, two, three or more units. It can¬
not be a little less or a little more. Thus a more perfect
justification can be obtained than would be likely to be
attained in any other way. Spacing out or taking in
can be accomplished by changing a three-unit space for
a four-unit space, or a two for a four, or vice versa.
There are therefore no en quadrats, three-em spaces,
four-em spaces or five-em spaces, except as they happen
accidentally to agree with the body. The quadrats also
are multiples of the unit, and differ (except accidentally)
from other quadrats. Under Mr. Benton's system he
has an -agate of which the letters, figures, points, spaces
and quadrats are just the same as in one of his non¬
pareils. In these there are twelve units to pica. On
one-sixth of this there are i, 1 and several other letters;
on three units c, e, r, s and many other characters, and
on four units many letters. He also has an eleven-unit
nonpareil, an eleven and a ten unit minion; an eleven,
ten and nine unit brevier ; a ten and nine unit bourgeois,
a nine and eight unit long primer, an eight and seven unit
small pica and a seven-unit pica. These varying sizes
are so that there shall be a choice between thick and
thin fonts. The agate is 16^ ems wide to the alphabet.
This is the widest, the thinnest face being the eight-unit
or small pica, which gives a width of 12^ ems. It is
doubted by many printers whether the loss by abrasion
and the augmentation by dirt will not soon change the
sizes of the characters, so that the line of agate which
originally contained 360 units will receive only 359;^ or

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