When writing for the press, never use a lead pencil. Let your copy be made with black ink on good white paper. We have been pained to see the checkered pages of a report to an extensive religious association, which report had been in the first place wholly written with a lead pencil: then words canceled, words interlined, various changes made,—and all these alterations done with pen and ink. Of course, sleeve and hand rubbing over the plumbago gave the whole a dingy and blurred appearance. The effect of the ink sprinkled among the faded pencilings was so much like that of mending an old garment with new cloth, that the manuscript had an unchristian, nay, even heathenish aspect. However, from this copy the report was printed,—let us charitably hope that it did much good in the world.
If proof-sheets present peculiarities of spelling and language, such for instance as appear in ancient works, and which are affected or indulged in by some moderns, every word whose correctness he doubts and is unable to verify, should be referred by the proof-reader to author or editor. The latter, familiar with the terms used, may consider some queries frivolous or puerile; but an author should appreciate conscientiousness in the reader, and be glad to have {p32} all doubts settled before his work reaches the eyes of reviewers.
That Dr. Johnson was guilty of harshness toward a proof-reader is not to be wondered at; but it is a matter of wonder that his conduct appears to have been approved by other editors. In J. T. Buckingham’s edition of Shakspeare (1814) is, at page 915, a remarkable note, apologizing for a few “trifling errors,” and adopting as an excuse a quotation from an advertisement “from the first edition of Reed, 1793”:
He, whose business it is to offer this unusual apology, very well remembers to have been sitting with Dr. Johnson, when an agent from a neighboring press brought in a proof sheet of a republication, requesting to know whether a particular word in it was not corrupted. “So far from it, sir,” (replied the Doctor with some harshness,) “that the word you suspect, and would displace, is conspicuously beautiful where it stands, and is the only one that could do the duty expected from it by Mr. Pope.”
Dr. Johnson’s assumption that the agent would displace the word, seems to have been wholly gratuitous. The employees of the neighboring press did precisely what they should have done,—what every conscientious proof-reader often feels obliged to do. If suspected words were passed without questioning, there would be many errors of the press which would justify some show of “harshness” toward the neglectful “agent.”
CHAPTER II. PROOF-READING.
So long as authors the most accomplished are liable to err, so long as compositors the most careful make occasional mistakes, so long as dictionaries authorize various spellings, just so long must there be individuals trained and training to detect errors, to rectify mistakes, and to decide upon and settle all points which lexicographers leave in doubt. Such individuals are known as Proof-readers.
Movable types, after having been used in printing newspaper or book, etc., are distributed to their several compartments (boxes) for future use. In distributing, the compositor, holding several lines in his left hand, takes from the top line, between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, as many words or letters as he can conveniently manipulate, and moving his hand over the case drops each letter into its proper box. Suppose, for instance, he takes up the word “feasible”; he carries his hand to the “f” box, and drops off the first letter; of course he knows, without looking at the word again, that he is next to drop off the “e”—and so, very quickly, his hand glides from box to box, each receiving its proper letter. This process is repeated until the {p34} types which composed the form are all, apparently, returned to the compartments whence they were taken.
Suppose, however, that when ready to distribute “feasible,” his attention is drawn momentarily to a neighbor who desires his opinion as to a blotted word in his take, and that, on returning to his work of distributing, he imagines, or seems to remember, that the word in hand is “fencible,”—the “a” goes into the “n” box, and the “s” finds itself at “c.” By and by, in setting type from this same case, the compositor picks up the letters for “emancipate.” If he happens to take up the two wrong letters consecutively from the right boxes, his proof-sheet—unless he reads and corrects the matter in his stick—will present the word “emaasipate”—which the proof-reader will mark, for the compositor to correct.
Or it may happen in distributing, that the “f” and “e” cohere, and are both dropped into the “f” box. If the compositor’s mind is not intent on the matter in hand, the error may not be noticed at once; in which case the “a” gets into the “e” box, and some or all the other letters of the word go wrong. The error must be discovered when the last letter is reached; but to search for each misplaced type until it is found, would probably take more time than would be required to correct the errors which must otherwise appear in the proof.