letterboard

A letterboard is a shallow wooden or metal frame, typically about 2 to 4 inches deep, divided into a grid of small compartments or pigeonholes. Each compartment holds a single character, symbol, or piece of foundry type, sorted by font, size, and category. The board sits flat on a bench or stands vertically on a tilt frame, allowing compositors to see and reach the sorts they need without hunting through cases.

The grid itself varies by house and purpose. A standard letterboard might contain 60 to 150 compartments arranged in rows and columns, with compartments sized to hold type bodies ranging from 6 point to 72 point or larger. Metal letterboards, usually made of cast iron or steel, are more durable and hold heavier sorts; wooden boards are lighter and cheaper but wear faster. The compartments are sometimes labelled with small brass or paper tags to identify contents and help maintain order.

A letterboard serves as a working inventory and holding area. After a job is typeset and printed, the compositor breaks down the composed lines by hand, sorting each character back into its compartment on the letterboard. This board then feeds the broader type circulation: type is pulled from the letterboard to restock the case (the drawer containing the standing inventory of a given font and size), or it is held in the letterboard temporarily when space in the cases is tight. In foundries and large shops, letterboards form a buffer between the composing room and the type-casting or type-stock areas.

Letterboards are particularly common in jobbing offices where many short runs and varied fonts are in use, because they allow quick retrieval of odd sizes and special characters without dismantling a full case. They also reduce wear on the main type cases by spreading the load of daily pick-and-place work across multiple surfaces. A busy shop might have ten or more letterboards in use simultaneously, each dedicated to a specific size range or specialty (ornaments, pi sorts, or foreign characters, for example).

The term "letterboard" is straightforward: a board for letters (type sorts). In older sources, it may be called a "sorting board" or simply a "board," but letterboard became standard nomenclature to distinguish it from imposing stones, galleys, and other flat equipment on the composing bench. The board's importance is often underestimated by those outside the trade, but to a compositor, a well-organized letterboard means the difference between a smooth day and hunting frantically for a single piece of 14-point italic.