Another lovely example of etymology used well:
But more importantly, this work is an essay in that it ‘essays’ or ‘attempts’. This is perhaps better conveyed by the German word ‘ein Versuch’: an essay, but, in its primary meaning, an ‘attempt’ or ‘experiment’. What is attempted here is a shift of orientation for the history of typography, and so also for it’s practice. Kinross, Modern Typography (8)
It’s a feature of the modern (or postmodern, depending on how you perceive the boundaries) to be self-conscious about your intellectual endeavors, in part because the act of declaring anything to be “true” becomes precarious, but also because the process becomes just as interesting – if not more so – than the end result.
Printing becomes modern with the spread of knowledge about printing itself: with the published descriptions of its practices; with the classification of its materials and processes; with the co-ordination of dimensions of materials, enabling their exchange and better conjunction; with the establishment of a record of its history. These things, which one begins to see in the late seventeenth century in (especially) England and France, are realizations of the implications of printing to discuss that process itself. Kinross, Modern Typography (16)
