The Short-Term Consequences Of Gutenberg's Printing Press

Books today are everywhere. We find them in many households, libraries and schools all around the globe. We find many different types of books; from stories to educational textbooks, we regard them today as sources of knowledge and amusement. But it wasn’t the case before 1455. That year, one of the greatest inventions in human history was revealed to the world; Gutenberg’s printing press. This press allowed printing in massive quantity, spreading books all around Europe and the rest of the world at a fast rate. The printing press had many positive consequences on society. At first, it standardized grammar and spelling, and then introduced the mass production of books. It finally inspired future printing technologies around the world.

Johannes

The press standardized grammar, spelling and punctuation in works. At the time, books would be copied by monks from the original work. Not only it was very expensive and long to do so, but books would not be identical from one monk to another. Each monk had his way of spelling and using grammar, which could lead to differences in interpretation. Every monk had his own spacing between words and lines, and, often, would not be the same from page to page of the same book. With Gutenberg’s printing press, spelling and grammatical rules soon were recognized and followed. Spacing between words was now the same and lines where evenly spaced on every page. This standardization could be seen in Gutenberg’s 42-line bible. Every page except for the first 10 had 42 lines and used the same font; there were 290 master characters to complete the bible. The printing press also allowed the number of letters on every page to increase by 50%. Those new found regulations of printing allowed readers to interpret authors’ intentions more accurately and made reading a more pleasant activity. Since the movable type press spread all around Europe, those rules soon became common everywhere on the