The link between the editorial staff and the printing department, preparing the copy for the compositors, was the sub-editor, a crucial, if generally unloved and often loosely delineated, role in all newspapers. Many sub-editors started their careers as compositors, setting up the print. Both jobs required a high level of care and concentration. The sub-editors often carried the biggest burden of all, and for some it could be a stepping stone to an editorial position. But, according to one commentator, ‘the sub-editor is usually a matter-of-fact individual, who has escaped being an editor by his lack of imagination, and who has risen from being a reporter by his sound judgement, and steady, plodding ways’. According to Arnot Reid, he was generally ‘the hardest working man on the paper’, with the unenviable task of revising, deleting, cutting down, altering and perhaps rejecting what came from the editorial department.

Among the sub-editor's tasks was ensuring that everything would fit in and this often involved a ruthless cutting of the over-prolix and, for most of the period, handwritten copy. The ‘sub’ was ultimately responsible for the general appearance of pages, for checking spelling, improving the syntax, eliminating cliché and sometimes having to ensure that any last-minute news was squeezed in. On a daily this was carried out in the early hours of the morning, with the overseer of the composing room warning of a shrinking deadline. All of this was achieved by the sub-editor with little recognition beyond the office. Not for him the high profile of the editor or even the reporter.

Whereas in earlier times editor, sub-editor and a handful of reporters were in close contact, by the 1890s, according to one commentator, there was ‘no real community of interest between the editor and leader writer on the one hand and the sub-editor and reporter on the other’. The chances of a sub-editor or a reporter becoming an editor were becoming much rarer.

From the sub-editor, material went to the case room, to the compositors for setting up for printing, a task that was transformed in the half century after 1850. It did not just require manual dexterity to set up the type, but a sense of how the finished page would look.