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Talk:Pi Alley

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Commons category

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Should the Commons category (currently at commons: Category:Pie Alley (Boston)) be moved to match the title here at ENWP? -21:57, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

pied type .. dumped into the alley??

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The article meantions pied type which newspaper composing rooms dumped into the alley as one of the conjectured explanations of the alley's name. But . . really??? In the old days of letterpress, when printing was complete and the form was taken down, the sorts would be painstakingly "distributed" back into the cases - not discarded. They were expensive high-precision castings! (and the metal itself was an expensive alloy, of lead).

In later "hot metal" days the slugs would be very simply chucked back into the machine, which would melt them down as it produced the slugs for the next job.

Do the quoted sources really offer this "dumping" conjecture? seriously (rather than, for example, as illustrating the lack of credible explanations)?

And if they do, do we need to report the idea? And if we do, should we not distance ourselves from it? (eg by saying it has been suggested that . . ). 90.244.219.186 (talk) 20:12, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]