⏳ PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 3–4 weeks for delivery

This book is printed one copy at a time when you order it. There is no warehouse shelf of these — your copy goes on the press after you check out. Hardcover binding takes longer than paperback. Please allow 3–4 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

Every letter the sign painter draws descends from one alphabet — the Roman capital — and Frank Forrest Frederick's A Roman Alphabet and How to Use It (1917) is a working manual for mastering it. This is not a picture book of fancy letters; it is instruction in the foundation letter of the trade: correct proportion, correct spacing, and the stroke order that makes a Roman letter look right whether it is painted six inches or six feet high.

Frederick teaches the alphabet as a construction — the width relationships between letters, the spacing that makes a word read cleanly, and the brush handling that produces the thick-and-thin strokes of the Roman form. Get the Roman right and every other alphabet you attempt sits on a solid foundation; get it wrong and no amount of ornament will save the sign.

Published in 1917, the book belongs to the golden age of American sign writing, when the trade was at its most disciplined and the Roman letter was its common currency. For the modern student it is the fastest route to letters that look professional: study these pages with a brush in hand and your layout work will improve within weeks.

Written for beginning and working sign painters, lettering students, stone carvers, and graphic designers who want their capitals to carry real classical authority.

Details: 6×9" hardcover (case laminate), black and white interior, cream paper.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1917 printing, and the print quality of your book reflects the condition of that original scan.

What that means in plain terms: you may see faded text, uneven inking, age spots, show-through from the back of pages, and other imperfections that were in the 1917 original or introduced by the scanning process. These are preserved as-is — they are not printing defects, and they are not something we can fix.

We are not responsible for the condition of the original source material. If you want a pristine modern typeset book, this isn't it. If you want the actual 1917 book with all its character intact, you're in the right place.

Printed on demand by IngramSpark. One copy at a time — no inventory, no waste.