6 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2026
    1. reply to u/UsefulLength9143 at https://old.reddit.com/r/typewriters/comments/1ruew5h/royal_p_this_isnt_pics_font_is_it/

      Looking closely at the slugs with letters, several clearly have a "P" foundry mark which was commonly used in this time period to identify Royal's "Royal Pica" face (see: https://typecast.munk.org/2011/04/24/1964-nomda-blue-book-royal-font-styles/) which was the generic name they gave in their catalogs to this particular pica (pitch) typeface. Similarly a foundry mark of "E" was often used to represent their 12 pitch "Royal Elite" typeface. Surely it's the case that the designer had some other name for this typeface, but I've never seen Royal documents which specify anything other than Royal Pica or Royal Elite.

      While it certainly helps to see the rulers on the carriage to doublecheck, one can guess the exact typeface in this instance solely by the foundry marks, though this is not always the case for a wide number of manufacturers.

      Generally people are right in asking to see the ruler as the difference in width of slug on a 10CPI and 12CPI machine is on the order of 1/64 of an inch which is incredibly hard to discern visually on photos like these without something to use for scale.

  2. Jun 2025
  3. Oct 2024
    1. Advanced Typing: Duplicating and Manuscript. Vol. MN-1512d, 1943. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ve5JnTUzvo.

      Stencils

      Before writing stencils, be sure to clean your type. (Don't use liquid solvent.)

      Be sure to place the cushion sheet properly behind the stencil.

      Place the paper bail rollers at the extreme left and right of the stencil to prevent them from marking the master.

      For errors, rub individual characters separately with a burnisher using a circular motion.

      Hectograph masters, Hectograph ribbon (ditto ribbon)

      Wax pencils

      Typefaces

      20% more type on a page with elite than 10 inch pica.

      Pica allows approximately 26-40 lines on standard letterhead giving 300-450 words to a page.

      Special characters: - o for degrees ' and " for feet and inches or minutes and seconds along with superscript - division: - backspace colon - pound sterling: L backspace f - exclamation point: period backspace ' - equal sign: hyphen backspace variable hyphen - paragraph mark: P backspace I

      proofreaders' marks<br /> # followed by a number is used to mean insert that number of spaces

      Centering timestamp 19:37

  4. Aug 2024
    1. The majority of typewriter typefaces came in one of a few sizes either pica (10 characters per inch) or elite (11 or 12 CPI). Usually you can tell by the number of characters on rule at the back of the paper table. A scale that goes up to 85 is usually indicative of Pica machine (85*10 CPI = 8.5", which is the standard paper width in the US) and a scale that goes into the the 90s up to 102 indicates elite. There were definitely other sizes for custom typing, but they're rarer. You might see things like 6 CPI which was used for children or people with vision problems and machines that go up to 18 CPI. I've heard rumors of 20 CPI, but never seen one.

  5. Jul 2024