With hundreds of Reports and reports from Institutions and institutions, from Departments and departments, from Bureaus and bureaus, trials at law, equity cases, interference cases, Revised Statutes, and thousands of documents, all as anxious to attract the public eye as ever Mr. Riddleberger was to catch the Speaker’s, and rushing compositors and proof-readers and steam-presses with a dizzying velocity which almost prohibits nicety of execution, it were far wiser for authors and copyists to attend carefully to the legibility and accuracy of their manuscripts, than to send to the printer blundering haphazard pages, accompanied with directions running counter {p68} to what the writers themselves have exhibited in their manuscripts.
We recollect that a printer once received a manuscript accompanied with minute directions, extending even to syllabication. It was given out to the compositors, and a rough manuscript it was; one found in his take, “One Spanish Mc Krel” and “One caperamber,”—as he and the others in his chapel read the words,—conundrums which after hard study of characteristics and comparison of letters were, by an ingenious old typographic Champollion, solved as “One Spanish mackerel” and “One café-au-lait.”
If Gunther’s “Catalogue of Fishes, British Museum” is to be written, it is proper to abbreviate it to “Gunther’s Cat. Fish., Brit. Mus.” An author who undertook so to write it, jammed the Cat. close to the Fish, and placed the first period above the line. He should not have been surprised when he read in his proof-sheet, “Gunther’s Cat-Fish., Brit. Mus.”,—which, although apparently according to copy, was not “according to Gunther.”
The use of commas and other pause-marks is to bring out the sense, and when capitals will subserve the same purpose it is well to use them also,—whether one finds a printed Rule directing it or not. Thus Stedman writes:
“In his verse, Emerson’s spiritual philosophy and laws of conduct appear again, but transfigured. Always the idea of Soul, central and pervading, of which Nature’s forms are but the created symbols. As in his early discourse he recognized {p69} two entities, Nature and the Soul, so to the last he believed Art to be simply the union of Nature with man’s will—Thought symbolizing itself by Nature’s aid.”
Names of States and Territories, when following names of cities, towns, and post-offices, are usually contracted; as:
Savannah, Ga.; Brunswick, Me.; San Diego, Cal.; New Orleans, La.; Plymouth, Mass.
But in any other connection, names of States and Territories are spelled in full; as:
Mendocino County, California. We crossed Nevada Territory. We visited Luray Cave, Virginia.
In an office where the employees are accustomed to the above rules, absolute uniformity would be attainable, if it were not for the interference of specialists. If, from such office, a book is issued in which you find “Richmond, Virginia,” and, farther on, “Richmond, Va.,” you may be sure that a “direction” to “spell out, in all cases, names of States and Territories” accompanied the manuscript; that one reader, mindful, as it happened, of the important direction, spelled “Virginia,” while another, from force of habit, followed the office style, and made no change from the customary “Va.”; and you may further conclude, that the author of the work, when examining the proof-sheets, had himself become oblivious of the direction he had given.