Editing Incunable (section)

==Types==
There are two types of printed incunabula: the [[block book]], printed from a single carved or sculpted wooden block for each page (the same process as the [[woodcut]] in art, called ''xylographic''); and the ''[[Typography|typographic book]]'', made by individual cast-metal [[movable type]] pieces on a [[printing press]]. Many authors reserve the term "incunabula" for the latter.<ref>''Oxford Companion to the Book'', ed. M. F. Suarez and H. R. Woudhuysen, OUP, 2010, s.v. 'Incunabulum', p. 815.</ref>

The spread of [[printing]] to cities both in the North and in Italy ensured that there was great variety in the texts and the styles which appeared. Many early [[typeface]]s were modelled on local [[writing]] or derived from various European [[Blackletter|Gothic]] scripts, but there were also some derived from documentary scripts like [[William Caxton|Caxton]]'s, and, particularly in Italy, types modelled on handwritten scripts and [[calligraphy]] used by [[Renaissance humanism|humanists]].

Printers congregated in urban centres where there were [[scholar]]s, [[ecclesiastic]]s, [[lawyers]], and [[nobles]] and [[profession]]als who formed their major customer base. Standard works in [[Latin]] inherited from the medieval tradition formed the bulk of the earliest printed works, but as books became cheaper, [[vernacular]] works (or translations into vernaculars of standard works) began to appear.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}