Reglets is the name that printers give to certain strips of wood seven to eight lines wide and planed down to the thickness of the different body sizes of type. [1] The name reglets applies to those used with type sizes between folio [2] and petit-canon. One speaks of a reglet of petit-romain , or of cicéro meaning that because of its thickness the reglet can be considered a sort of piece of type. Thus reglets are referred to as of such and such a type [size] as in the foregoing examples. Reglets are used to provide white space in the titles of some works but it is better to use quads whenever possible because cast metal is much more rigid than wood however well it has been worked. [3] Even if perfectly made [wooden reglets] are subject to wear and to all sorts of damage.

Notes

1. There are 12  lignes to one pre-revolutionary French inch ( pouce ) The standardized conversion for a ligne is 2.2558291 mm (1 mm = 0.443296  ligne ). One ligne is the equivalent of 0.0888 international inch.

2. Feuillet . This is likely to be an error. Feuillet refers to the book format more correctly known as folio. But folio is not a type size whereas petit-canon , cicéro and petit-romain are. Presumably the author is referring to type of a relatively large size as used in printing folios as compared to the fairly small type petit-canon. For relative sizes of mid-eighteenth century French type see the tables at the end of the article Printing type.

3. Savage is of exactly the opposite opinion, preferring reglets to quads (which he calls by their French name, quadrats). ‘The use of reglets is to branch out titles, jobs, and other matter, to economise the use of quadrats: it is preferable to quadrats for this purpose, in keeping the lines more even.’ William Savage, A dictionary of the art of printing (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1841), 701 .