Physical description

Composing Stick, is an instrument used to assemble pieces of metal type into words and lines which are later bound into a forme, set in a galley and printed. Some composing sticks had one adjustable end allowing the length of the lines and consequent width of the page or column to be set, with spaces of different sizes being used to make up the exact width. Other early composing sticks were fixed to the width of a newspaper column, when newspapers were still composited by hand.