How to Read Gregg Pub Co Printers Codes – Revised

Attached is a revised version of my earlier document explaining how to read Gregg Publishing Company printers codes to determine the year and month of the press run for a copy of a Gregg book.

Originally, my investigation indicated that a month/year code (e.g. A-54)  was used in the press run date segment of the printers code on the copyright page of a Gregg book through December 1941.  Starting in January 1942, I believed that the actual Month and year was used in the printers code (e.g. March-1942).

Recently I found a copy of Functional Method Part 2 copyright 1936 with the printers code A-65 for January 1942.  On the other hand, copies of the Anniversary editions of Rip Van Winkle and The Great Stone Face were found with printers codes that started with March-1942.

I am trying to determine exactly when Gregg switched from the month/year code to the actual year in the printers code.  Please look in your Anniversary books for a printers code that has 65 (for 1942) or the actual year 1942.  I am especially interested finding books with printers codes for January, February, March, or April 1942.  I suspect that there was some overlap in printers code systems and that the transition was not clean.  The likely place to find these codes would be in those Green Cover Anniversary Gregg Shorthand Novels, as many of them were re-printed in 1942.

Thanks in advance for any discoveries.

Attachment: HowToReadGreggPrintersCodesV2.pdf

(by Paul James  for group greggshorthand)


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6 comments Add yours
  1. One of my Gregg books has this code: 3E78-T-40. Not sure what printer is the T referring to. Would the 3E78 in front mean May 3, 1931? About the 40, could this be just 40 copies?

  2. –Ignore the 3 – Where was the book published? What is the title? Sometime British Gregg books have an extra number or letter in front of publisher's code
    –E78 = May 1931. They only used months and years, not days of the month.
    –T indicates the name of the publisher. I know that NP=National Process. I don't have a list of publisher codes.
    –40 is a symbol for the press run. I don't have a table for those codes. One expert guessed that 5 = 5,000. There would not be a press run of 40 books. It might be 40,000, but that is a guess.

  3. That's the copy of the Anniversary Gregg Shorthand Dictionary that I have with the annotations by Winifred Kenna Richmond noting about the errors in the outlines. The other copy of the dictionary from her collection that I have has a 2H-7a-T-31 printer code. Both books are identical (they have the mistakes in the outlines). So a word to those owning the dictionary: if you have one of the old reprints, the outlines may be wrong! Dictionaries printed in the 40s do not have the errors. Both books were published in the US.

  4. Here is what I have with me:

     

    Gregg Speed Studies, Third Edition. Copyright, 1917, 1919, 1929, 1941.  Printers code: Apr.1942-NP-50  [The "50" at the end is in small print, about half the size of the rest of the code.]

    Gregg Shorthand, Anniversary Edition,…Copyright, 1916,1929. Printers code: MARCH 1942-NP-100

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