The Practice of Typography: Modern Methods of Book Composition
The pattern
This still is filed under Craft-argument book.
Define
A book or manual that sells a method by arguing it. Chapters as proof, not as decoration around a product.
Mechanism
Authority by treatise. The reader who accepts the argument has already accepted the seller as teacher.
Verdict
We can teach a craft in public and the teaching is the funnel.
Why it works
It teaches by counter-example. Rather than describe a bad running title, De Vinne sets one properly, at size, then convicts it in three lines directly underneath, which makes the fault visible before it is named and gives the apprentice a pattern he can recognise at the stone. The marginal imposition diagrams do the same for a task that is impossible to hold in the head, turning an abstract folding rule into a picture with a mental-arithmetic check beside it. The preface also narrows the promise hard, to the ordinary book of the established publisher, which is what lets a single volume be complete rather than merely long.
Steal this when
Steal this when you are documenting a physical or procedural craft where the reader has to recognise quality by eye, not by rule. Show the specimen at real size, let the reader form a judgement, then print the verdict underneath it in smaller type.