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Alas, we cannot make the computer that runs all of this photo typesetting do the thinking for us, rubber type or not. It was a lesson I had to learn all over again.
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technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983
Typographical errors? Maybe the Pope would understand
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 1984, The Syracuse Newspapers
Old-timers in the paragraph factory fondly remember the days when
"rubber type" was an impossibility. In fact, it was
part of a joking remark to anyone who had written a story that
was too long: "Get out the rubber type, Harry," one
editor would say to another.
These days, technology has made rubber type a reality. It's not
really rubber, of course. It's not even type, at least not the
way we used to think of type as something you could hold in your
hand.
These days type is nothing but a series of images on film. It
can be stretched and pulled in any direction, and so it's about
as close to rubber as you can find.
With modern-day photo typesetting, we can make words italic or
even boldface any time we want to, just by pushing an extra button
on a keyboard.
We can even make the words much smaller and pack them much closer
together, to get more in on each line.
Alas, we cannot make the computer that runs all of this photo
typesetting do the thinking for us, rubber type or not. It was
a lesson I had to learn all over again last week after realizing,
too late, that five pints don't fit in a quart pot.
The five pints were the many inches of type I had written for
the special Money Matters American car issue. The quart pot? You
guessed it -- the space my column was supposed to fill.
So I learned a lesson, right? Get too windy and they cut you off,
eh?
Just like Larry King on the radio, right?
Well, not exactly. You see, in computerland we have a way around
these things. The computer saves everything. All you have to do
is send a little electronic message down into those tiny memory
cells, and beep-beep out comes something you wrote a long time
ago.
So I figured maybe I'd take advantage of this newfangled talent
and stick what got cut out last week on the end of today's column.
I reached (electronically speaking, you understand) down into
my computer terminal and pulled it out.
Here it is:
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - Bishop Harold Dimmerling of Rapid City
says he's not interested in seeing a petition that seeks to have
Democratic Rep. Tom Daschle excommunicated from the Roman Catholic
Church. "That's not the way it goes," said Dimmerling.
"It's between the individual and God."
Well, nobody's perfect. Maybe somebody in Sioux Falls has got
the end of last week's column.
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