300 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1912. 
toned towards cream-colour is to be preferred under average con- 
ditions of class-room illumination. A hard-pressed paper of suitable 
quality should be used, as a soft paper has two defects—(1) it is readily 
soiled, (2) the surface is easily rubbed off and the detritus is injurious. 
The print of one side must not show through from the other, and the 
printing must not affect the evenness of the surface of the other side. 
These rules also apply to illustrations, which afford a good test of the 
opacity of the paper. Books are occasionally bound and pressed before 
the ink is dried, and a faint impression of the opposite sheets causes a 
haze. Copies with this defect should be rejected. 
4. Illustrations include (1) pictures for young readers, (2) diagrams 
and sketches, and (3) photographic reproductions involving consider- 
able elaboration of detail. For (1) it is important to recollect that 
children are only confused by elaborate or complex pictures. Bold, 
firm treatment of a few objects is appropriate alike to their visual powers 
and to their understanding. From this point of view line blocks from 
pen-and-ink drawings are preferable to half-tone blocks from photo- 
graphs or from wash-drawings. The pictures should be of a good 
size, and the printed text should not extend in narrow lines at the side. 
In the case of (2) diagrams, it is important that the lettering should 
not be too small to be easily read. (3) For the older scholars it is 
sometimes necessary to provide illustrations exhibiting details with 
the precision most readily obtainable by photography. Tor the sake 
of obtaining effective illustrations of this kind, use is frequently made 
of highly glazed paper. Whenever this is done it is important that 
such paper should be used for illustrations only, and not for the text. 
By the use of recent methods it is possible to secure half-tone prints 
with good rendering of detail on matt paper. (See recent British 
Museum publications, of which some are entirely printed on non-coated 
and non-shiny papers.) 
5. Ink.—The ink should be a good black, and it is important to 
secure a proper, sufficient, and even distribution of it over the whole 
page. The use of coloured inks is strongly to be deprecated, especially 
the use of more than one colour on a page. 
6. Mode of printing.—-Ordinary text should not be printed in 
double columns. Types should be in true alignment along the base 
line. Hand-set type is greatly to be preferred to ordinary machine-work 
of the present day; indeed, much of the improvement at which this 
report aims will be lost if printing of the standard of hand-set type 
be not insisted upon. The practice of printing from stereos produces 
quite satisfactory results, provided that the stereo is carefully made 
from unworn type. A slight thickening of all the lines results from 
stereotyping, but this in no way detracts from legibility. Stereos 
should not be used when they begin to show signs of wear. 
7. Character of type..—The type should be clean-cut and well- 
defined. Condensed or compressed type should not be used, as 
breadth is even more important than height. The contrast between 
the finer and the heavier strokes should not be great, for hair-strokes 
1 For explanation of technical terms, see Appendix. 
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