I've never heard the term "type specimen" being used in this way. To me it has always been used in biology or paleontology to refer to individual specimens for defining a biological species. There are different kinds of type specimens such as holotype, lectotype, syntype and paratype. In the publishing industry, I guess "type" here is used in the sense of "type writer" or "type face" to imply text, not in the biological sense as in a "kind" of something, though that may be the case as well. Sounds like another source of confusion.