out of sorts

In letterpress printing, a compositor works from a type case, a shallow wooden tray divided into compartments holding individual metal sorts (letters, numerals, punctuation marks, and spaces). Each compartment holds a specific character in a specific size and weight. When a particular letter or sorts type runs out before a job is finished, the case is described as out of sorts, and the work must stop or proceed with substitutes.

The problem surfaces most acutely with high-frequency letters. A job setting body text in 12-point roman might exhaust the lowercase e, a, or t well before completing a moderate print run. Punctuation marks like periods and commas deplete quickly too. Some foundries sold replacement sorts individually or in assorted packets specifically to top up cases; the most common characters were sometimes stocked in double or triple the normal complement.

Causes and workarounds

The shortage might arise from poor planning (underestimating character frequency for a given language or text), from careless redistribution after a previous job (sorts returned to the wrong compartments or lost), or simply from the wear and damage that follows repeated handling and casting. A compositor caught out of sorts had few options: borrow from a neighboring shop, wait for new casting from the foundry (slow), cannibalize less-used sorts from another case (rough), or substitute a visually similar character from a different font (obvious and unprofessional).

The term survives in English as a metaphor for being in disarray or slightly unwell, but its technical meaning in printing belongs to the letterpress era. Modern digital typesetting eliminated the physical exhaustion of sorts, though the phrase remains a useful reminder of the constraints that shaped print culture for four centuries.