Sort Snorter
A Microsoft Word macro for letterpress printers that shows how many of each sort is needed to set a document


Mark Wilden
Updated 02/04/04

Sort Snorter is a free Microsoft Word macro for letterpress printers that shows how many of each sort is needed to set a document. When you run Sort Snorter on a document, it produces output like this:

12 pt Times New Roman
68e 65t 57o 56r 40n 39s 33a 29i 23l 22c 22d 17u 15m 15h 11. 10S 10f 10w 8p 8g 6y 4, 4A 4b 4/ 3M 2W 2k 2— 2; 1T 1- 1F 18 1x 1R 1q 1L 1H 1C 1( 1) 1’ 1:

10 pt Baskerville
18e 18o 14t 12r 11n 11c 10a 10u 9s 8h 8i 6m 6d 4l 4y 4f 3. 2T 2S 2w 2p 2, 1v 1N 1I

24 pt Wedding Text
3r 2S 2o 2t 1n 1e

Sort Snorter also includes a long-format version.

Sort Snorter works on Windows and Mac systems with Microsoft Word.

Download instructions
Long version 		Download instructions
Short version
  1. Right-click Download Sort Snorter, and choose Save Target As....
  2. On the resulting dialog box, click the My Documents icon, then click Save.
  3. After the download is complete, choose Open from the resulting dialog box.
  4. If you see a dialog box about macros, click Enable Macros.
  5. Read sortsnorter.doc and try it out, as described in the document. If you get a dialog box about macros being disabled, click OK, then continue with How to Enable Macros.
  1. Download Sort Snorter, choosing Save, not Open.
  2. After downloading, open sortsnorter.doc, making sure macros are enabled.

How To Enable Macros

  1. From the Microsoft Word Tools menu, choose Options.
  2. On the resulting dialog box, click the Security tab, then click Macro Security... at the bottom.
  3. Click Medium, then click OK. Click OK again.
    If sortsnorter.doc is open, close it and reopen it by continuing:
  4. From the File menu, choose Close.
  5. Again from the File menu, choose sortsnorter.doc.
  6. On the resulting dialog box, click Enable Macros.

Here's a good tip from Michael Russem at the Kat Ran Press:

I've figured out a round-about way to count ligatures. One could convert all of the ligatures to characters that were not used otherwise: all of the fi's could be [, fl's ], ff's =, ffl's %, ffi's # (or whatever is convenient). Then just take the count for [ and that's how many fi's are needed, and so on.