While printing changed the way books were made and distributed, early printed books exhibited much of the same qualities as that of illuminated manuscripts. These include:
Rubrication: Large decorated initial letters. These were left blank in the printing process and filled in by a rubricator after. A small letter, called a guide letter, would be printed in the place where the letter was to be rubricated. Then the rubricator would hand draw a decorated initial letter, which had similar characteristics to medieval manuscripts.
Colophon:A page with information from the printer about the book, including its publication year and place, author, printer, and more. Colophons help us identify books, as without the publication date, we cannot reliable designate a printed book as an incunabula without it.
Marginalia: Notes in the margin that provided information about the text next to it, and sometimes provided readers with a citation.
Regional Typefaces: The numerous scripts, such as the Gothic and Roman scripts, that were prevalent in medieval manuscripts carried over into the age of printing.
Columns: Often the format of double lined columns seen in medieval manuscripts carried over into printed books. Sometimes columns would be formatted so that the text would be surrounded by a column with explanatory text.
Abbreviations: In medieval manuscripts, scribes would use non alphabetical letters, or abbreviations. They used many different methods to abbreviate words, with the goal of saving space, as these books were very resource intensive to create. Early printed books intentionally carried over the content of medieval manuscripts, which resulted in the use of abbreviations in printed books as well.
This selection of text, taken from the Orationes Philelphi, has multiple abbriaviated words. How many can you spot?
