set type

set type

1. dated To arrange the pieces of wood or metal bearing letters or characters in a printing press. There's a small boutique publisher in this city who still prints books by setting type the old-fashioned way.
2. To arrange the way in which characters, letters, or words written in typeface appear in or on some visual medium. The graphic designer is exceptionally good at setting type in dynamic, interesting ways. When you're setting type for your website, you've got to be sure you take into account the different kinds of readers who might be reading your work.
See also: set, type
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2015 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

set type

to arrange type for printing; to prepare finished pages for printing. Have you finished setting the type for page one yet? John sets type for a living.
See also: set, type
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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References in classic literature ?
As the time passed, he had come to set type for the little revolutionary sheet they published weekly.
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Just as in our country printing-offices the apprentice first learns how to sweep out and bring water; then learns to "roll"; then to sort "pi"; then to set type; and finally rounds and completes his education with job-work and press-work; so the landlord-apprentice serves as call-boy; then as under-waiter; then as a parlor waiter; then as head waiter, in which position he often has to make out all the bills; then as clerk or cashier; then as portier.
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I learned how to set type and print from guys who had spent their whole careers in print shops or printing plants as pressmen, stonemen, or compositors before offset printing edged them out and hot metal went cold.
An interview with Kseniya Thomas
He is known to have sometimes set type for his own songs as he composed them--without intervening manuscript or piano.
Work, Henry Clay (1832-1884)
Nearly every newspaper from the 1890s through the 1970s set type by means of Linotype, and the technology was also indispensible for other printers who needed large jobs done quickly.
Romano, Frank. History of the Linotype Company
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