Five years at G&S Typesetters

Long, long ago, I had a girlfriend named Louise. She was 14 years my senior, but that is beside the point. A doctoral student at UT, she told me about a job opening that sounded right for a beginning journalist. I drove to the office of G&S Typesetters near the Colorado River in Austin and took a proofreading test. After a short interview with general manager Bill Grosskopf, I was hired. I had two stints on the night shift at G&S: from 1983 to 1985 and from mid-1987 to 1989. So I was there for about five years.

It was an important time for me, and I have come to appreciate the experience as the years have gone on. G&S was not a publishing company but one that performed essential work before handing polished pieces of book-art over to publishers. This is not a great description of what we did, but the passage of a quarter-century has had its effect. Even back then, I could not have made more than a general characterization of what took place inside the two-story building at 410 Baylor Street; I was a minor cog in a large, smooth-running machine.

The company had been formed just after World War II by Bill’s father, Gus. It slowly grew into one of the best and most modern typesetting operations in the USA. We handled scholarly books, and very well. Why else would Princeton University Press, the University of Michigan Press, the University of Chicago Press, the University of Virginia Press, the University of North Carolina Press, Stanford University Press, and the home town University of Texas Press—to name just a handful—choose to have us do many of their books? We were focused on turning out a quality product, and the demands were high. Bill had indicated that to me at our first meeting. To work at G&S, you had to be fairly smart, you had to combine speed and accuracy, and you had to display an almost fanatical attention to detail. I will not say that mistakes never happened, but they were rare.

G&S is where I learned the nitty-gritty aspects of writing, proofreading, editing and publishing. Had I not worked there, I might have lacked the courage to embark on my first book project (published in 1987) or try to make it as a self-supporting  writer. We had rules upon rules to follow, and there was logic behind all of them. One that I remember pertains to double-hyphenation. A hyphenated word could not be broken—at the end of a line—anywhere else but at that hyphen. Not before and not after because that would result in a double-H. The text in other lines might be adjusted if necessary. Loose lines, tight lines, “widows,” “orphans” and other problematic things were not tolerated. We used measuring tools and had to know about fonts, ligatures, new- and old-style figures, leading, kerning, capitalization, formatting, running heads, pagination and so forth.

My job was proofreading, which is a somewhat passive endeavor. I and the other proofers were told to do no more than correct errors, but I simply could not resist making improvements. If I saw redundancy, awkward phrasing or some editorial goof, I made the appropriate changes. They were usually accepted, as well.

Let me tell you about an episode which involved the University of California Press. We had one of their books, the specific subject of which I have forgotten. But there was one thing the author and editor at UC Press did that infuriated me. It pertained to the use of neo-racist terminology. I was probably risking my job to do this and, needless to say, I did not inform Bill. I wrote to the people at UC Press and inquired why they were using such blatantly biased language. That sparked a round-table meeting in which my observations were discussed and adopted. I found that quite gratifying, although the people in Berkeley were curious as to how I was privy to the manuscript of a book that had not yet been published!

There was always some grumbling among rank-and-file employees at G&S. Either the money was insufficient or the work was too hard or the Grosskopf family was not grateful for what we did. I tried to avoid that since merely having a good, steady job  with health insurance and other benefits was the key factor. What workplace setting is perfect?

My relationship with Louise was a stormy one, and we had parted ways shortly after I began working there, and so I was a free man. I fondly recall romances with a couple of fellow employees named Heidi and Cathleen.

G&S as I knew it no longer exists. It has been bought and is now operated by an Indian company, and the building is occupied by the Consulate General of Mexico. Whether the modern-day G&S adheres to the high standards of the 1980s, I cannot presume to know. But probably not. The book publishing industry has changed drastically in recent years, and having a firm like G&S do your typesetting is a luxury many can no longer afford. Often I read books done by one of the above-stated academic presses or a commercial company—Random House, Wiley or HarperCollins, for example. I see typos and other problems here and there, shake my head and think, “This would not have passed muster at G&S.”