{"id":774,"date":"2010-11-14T01:04:16","date_gmt":"2010-11-14T01:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.paperstone.co.uk\/Wordpress\/?p=774"},"modified":"2014-07-17T16:43:42","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T16:43:42","slug":"the_history_of_small_print","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paperstone.co.uk\/News\/articles\/the_history_of_small_print","title":{"rendered":"The History of Small Print"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"victorian reading\" src=\"\/images\/NewsImages\/2010\/victorian_reading.jpg\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i>Websters<\/i> defines \u201csmall print\u201d as text in which a company or other potentially liable body expresses things they don\u2019t want to say but are forced to by law. In advertising and marketing, small print provides a company with an opportunity to contradict that written or said previously and to disengage legally from any promises it has seemingly made.<\/p>\n<p>Small print was invented by one Ebenezer D\u2019Arblay, Victorian polymath and philanthropist. In early 1840s London, a time and place of bristling creativity and industry, D\u2019Arblay had patented what he thought was an efficient bookbinding method that he could employ in his modest but respected publishing house in Chiswell Street. But when a prototype of the invention was built, an inopportune discovery was made: the method could only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.paperstone.co.uk\/meeting-presentation\/binding-machines-supplies\/binding-machines\/l-7035\">bind<\/a> books of very small size \u2013 two inches tall or less in modern measurements.<\/p>\n<p>Faced with this shortcoming, Master D\u2019Arblay responded with typical grace, alacrity and ingenuity. \u201cIf these small tomes can only afford such limited wordage, we shall endeavour to make the very words smaller in dimensions,\u201d he is reputed to have said. He immediately put his childly workhouse charges and their small, nimble paws to manufacture a typeface for a tiny, barely legible print with which to fill his small <a href=\"https:\/\/www.paperstone.co.uk\/books-pads\/c-42\">books<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Victorian reading classes found the resulting books annoying to read, but the almost unreadable print aroused the interest of a burgeoning and confident legal profession, members of whom had been looking for a way to say things without being noticed. D\u2019Arblay\u2019s \u201csmall print\u201d quickly became adopted by solicitors, barristers and company legal representatives with something to hide. The rest is history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Websters defines \u201csmall print\u201d as text in which a company or other potentially liable body expresses things they don\u2019t want to say but are forced to by law. In advertising and marketing, small print provides a company with an opportunity to contradict that written or said previously and to disengage legally from any promises it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books_and_pads"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The History of Small Print<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.paperstone.co.uk\/News\/articles\/the_history_of_small_print\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The History of Small Print\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Websters defines \u201csmall print\u201d as text in which a company or other potentially liable body expresses things they don\u2019t want to say but are forced to by law. 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