First and foremost, this is not a negative post regarding the individual or cumulative intelligence of bookbinders. Not in the least. Some time ago Stephen Shepherd asked me "why is there a leading word at the bottom of the pages of most early books?". Or words to that effect.
You can see the example here from this page from Mechanic Exercises. "May" appears in the lower right hand corner of the text block. I've pondered this question for the past few months. The question kept me up late. I couldn't sleep for wont of a reasonable answer. I surmised this was a hold over from religious literature. It was my guess that the average 17th Century church goer couldn't keep track of a passage from one page to the next. Or perhaps the individual reading the passage needed a prompt before turning the page.
The same line of thought brought me to consider the possibility that the average reader had such a pitiful intellect that a memory crutch was needed lest the reader forget where he/she was in the book. I finally remembered what I had meant to do for a long time. Email Wesley Tanner, who knows a whole lot more about this stuff than I do.
Wesley cleared the air on this most important of matters.
"That's a pretty straightforward question. Early bookbinders were often Illiterate. The catchword was a guide to assembling books in the correct order. Even if a workman couldn't read, they could match the letters. This practice went back to the medieval period and lasted in manuscript practice well into the early part of the nineteenth century."
No hidden meanings from the tomes of the Rosecrucians. No magical import in the leading word of the following page. Just your average illiterate hard at work.
The other question that has long used up what remains of my brain cells has to do with the long 's'. I've read quite a bit about it. Thanks once again to Wesley, I've been turned on (if the phrase 'turned on' can be allocated to such a topic) to Typefoundry, a most interesting blog about... type. For the best answer to they why's and wherefore's of the long 's', read Typefoundry: Long S.
Till next, Gary
