This study is the first to undertake a detailed appreciation of the much-lauded printing language employed at Günther Zainer's Augsburg printing shop. The new findings are the result of an unprecedented excerpting method that takes account of the hitherto neglected role played by the sequence of different typesetters. A comparison with other contemporaneous written idioms in Augsburg gives even greater definition to the account of the early stages of the printing idiom in Augsburg. This approach provides a potential model for similar investigations at other printing locations.