Excerpt from `Printing Technology'

Johnson's style was another device, among many, with which he made the solid reality he needed, taking what is vague and uncertain, the abstract conceptions represented by the polysyllabic latinate words in this case, and locking them firmly into a structure of similarity and difference, always pairing or opposing one element to another in a way that forced reciprocal illumination and precision, building up the elements of composition until the whole is as stable as a line of print, as fully self-verifying in little as a language or a philosophic system on a larger scale. In the very suggestive terms used by Paul Frankl to define architectural styles, the Johnsonian style is a ``Style of Being'' rather than a ``Style of Becoming,'' fixing a certain meaning solidly in place, making it absolutely real, rather than enacting a process of becoming or following an elusive, indeterminate meaning.