Can you offer up a reference?
I’d imagine that it would be fairly common in older books on typesetting. Some sources spelled it as “nut” rather than “nutt”. The corresponding “em” quadrat was called a “mutton”.
One reference is Typographical Printing-Surfaces by Lucien Alphonse Legros and John Cameron Grant (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1916). I reproduce below in its entirety the first paragraph on page 55 of this work, without mercy snipping:
Spaces and quads.—In addition to the letter characters, spaces and quadrats, or quads, must be provided for separating the words and spacing out the lines. These usually have the following set widths : hair-space = ⅛ body, thin space = ⅕ body, middle space = ¼ body, thick space = ⅓ body, en quad = ½ body, em quad = the body, two-em quad = 2 × body, three-em quad = 3 × body and four-em quad = 4 × body. It might be inferred that the en and em quads are of the same set as the n and m characters, but this only occurs in exceptional circumstances. Owing to modern conditions of noise in printing-works, and to make orders clear on the telephone, these are better called “ nut ” and “ mutton ” quads respectively.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
