ink

Evidence

"individual letterforms lack definition, and numerous sorts are smudged with ink."

Remarks

In his assessment of early Ottoman letterpress printing, Nemeth notes that the quality of typography produced by Ibrahim Müteferrika's press was significantly lower than that of contemporary manuscript practice (p. 38). He identifies specific material failures, noting that individual letterforms often lacked visual definition and that many of the typographic sorts were physically smudged with ink (p. 38). This contributed to a visual appearance that was dense, cluttered, and irregular, which the author argues served as a deterrent to the adoption of print culture in the Ottoman Middle East (p. 38, Section 4).