Abstract
The first time I ever saw the words Littera scripta manet, they were inscribed on an exquisite little poster hanging beside the desk of a typographer employed by one of the last letterpress printers in North America. The meaning in English is 'The written word remains,' a declaration that had an immediate appeal for me. Attributed to the Roman poet Horace, and embraced by the great English printer William Caxton, this ancient saying bespeaks a quiet pride in the weight and dignity of the written text, and especially in the permanence, fixity, and distilled authority of fine printing. The spoken word depends upon the flickering and inconstant flame of oral transmission for its survival. Not so the written word. The page on which it appears is a tangible thing, an embodied thing, one that occupies an enduring place in the world, a distinct niche in space and time, a home on one's bookshelf. Adapted from the source document.