The stick was held in the left hand and the left thumb was used to hold types in position while each line was being filled (A). To set his text the compositor chose letters from a type case, put them upside down in the stick, held them in place with the thumb, used faceless types ("spaces") between words, and finally used a variety of spaces to "justify" the line, that is to make every line of type exactly equal in length to every other and to bring the text completely to the right margin. When the stick was full of evenly spaced lines the compositor emptied it onto a galley, holding the hundreds of small letters together with his thumbs and forefingers (B).
