Definition of a ‘Printing Office’ c 1890.

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In my experience the term “printing office” was quite a common term to describe a printing establishment, The Old Guv was known as the Government Printing Office and most of the other States of Australia used the same term, it was also used in the United Kingdom and United States.
The term “print shop” was generally used to describe a small to medium printing establishment. It appears the correct terminology was a bit of an issue back in the 1890s
The 1897 Brit­ish Printer art­icle, below, sets out their thoughts on ‘Print­ing Office’ from that time.
Refer­ring to the use of the term “office” as the name given to a printer’s estab­lish­ment, The Printer and Book­maker says:
“The dic­tion­ar­ies do not recog­nise any mean­ing of office which would jus­tify its use for a place where print­ing is car­ried on. Prop­erly, the busi­ness office of a print­ing office is the only part of the estab­lish­ment entitled to the word. The pro­pri­etor and the book-keeper or type­writ­ist are the only ones who are really jus­ti­fied in say­ing, ‘We are going down to the office now.’
The typos, press­men, et al., should say, ‘We are going down to the shop,’ if they wish to be exact. Cus­tom has sanc­tioned office, how­ever, and its use is prob­ably suf­fi­ciently fixed to last for cen­tur­ies. This being the case, it is time that the dic­tion­ar­ies recog­nised the mean­ing in which print­ers use the word, that the knights of the stick may be backed by lex­ico­graph­ical authority.”
via The Printing “Office” | British Letterpress.

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