First I should point out that I am most certainly in the camp of folks who find this particular topic "a bit dry." At points it’s practically dehydrating. What I found compelling, though, amidst all the apologies for impossible breadth (that made me wonder how the scholarship reads beyond this "introduction"), were certain terms used to describe (what seemed to be) the major concerns for the copying of manuscripts as well as (later) the appearance of different fonts/text (268). These three terms are: distinction, formality, and consistency. What is most interesting, to me, is to examine these terms (and the more general implications of their use) in present day.
The term “consistency” is brought up numerous times throughout Greetham’s chapters, but the three terms – distinction, formality, and consistency – are found at the very end of chapter 6 where Greetham discusses the problem of understanding a letter (in his example, the letter “A”) as being “distinct, formal, and consistent” if it can be understood/read in various fonts (Greetham 268). Now, without going back and re-reading the entire chapter, I can’t be certain if Greetham is lamenting the lack of a “distinct, formal, and consistent” identity of letters and/or type itself – I would speculate by the tone that there is a certain degree of it – but ultimately it seems as if the author simply calls attention to the history and evolution of the use of different fonts (and their geographical/religious politics). Even so, the question remains: what do we gain by calling attention to the perceived “instability” of the formal printed letter? To what degree does this questioning still exist within our contemporary print culture if at all?
So what if we examine these concerns in a contemporary context? There is no doubt that many concerns surrounding the book as an artifact as well as a text can still be framed in terms of distinction, formality, and consistency. Many of us are familiar with recent debates over the merits and drawbacks of electronic books. In fact, if you’ve read many electronic books you might notice that there are errors within the text that (so I've heard) are linked to the method used to transfer the texts into digital format. Modern-day scribal errors perhaps? Some might say this is a matter of consistency, arguing that those who choose to read e-books are now subject to an inconsistent text (perhaps in exchange for a more consistent artifact). Are these “obstructed” e-books no longer distinct and formal as they might have been in their print form? Or, are they even more distinct now given their newly-minted impurities/imperfections?
Interesting post. I think I would have to say the obstruction makes the e-text even more distinct precisely because of the loss of its formality. I remember last year purchasing a General Books copy of Hannah More's Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education. The whole book very obviously suffered from some glitch in transferring the text from an electronic version to book form. On the cover of the book the title was misspelled (Strictures became Structures)and many of the words in the actual text were interposed inside of other words so that the book read more like gibberish. Definitely, the book had lost any kind of formality, but what it lost in formality it certainly made of up for in "uniqueness".
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