CHAPTER I. WRITING FOR THE PRESS.
In an action recently brought against the proprietors of Lloyd’s paper, in London, for damages for not inserting a newspaper advertisement correctly, the verdict was for the defendant, by reason of the illegibility of the writing.
“The illegibility of the writing” is the cause of the larger portion of what are conveniently termed “errors of the press.” One can scarcely take up a periodical publication without finding, from editor or correspondent, an apology for some error in a previous issue, couched somewhat in this style: “The types made us say, in our last, something about the ‘Dogs of the Seine’, we certainly wrote ‘Days of the League.’” We have no doubt that, in a large majority of cases of this sort, if the question between “the types” and “the pen” were left to a jury, they would, as in the case of Lloyd’s paper, decide in favor of the types.
By dint of hard study, by comparison of letters in {p16} various words, and by the sense of the context, the compositor generally goes through his task creditably, in spite of the “illegibility of the writing.” But sometimes, in despair, he puts into type that word which most nearly resembles an unreadable word in the manuscript, making nonsense of the passage because he can make nothing else of it. We remember a great many instances of this sort, in our own experience as a proof-reader,—instances which, according to custom, might be attributed to “the types,” but which were really due to the writers’ carelessness alone. Thus, in a medical work, it was stated that “This case had been greatly aggravated by the ossification of warm poultices to the face”; the author having intended to write “application.”
Ames’s “Typographical Antiquities” has been made to figure as “Typographical Ambiguities,”—owing to chirographical ambiguity.
“The reports in the ‘Times’ and other journals, never give the name of the Lord Chandler.” “Chancellor” was, of course, intended by the writer, but this was an “error of the press.”
In an investigation touching the field of a compound microscope, a witness was made to say, “It would vary with the power of the lye-juice employed.” The reporter meant to write “eye-piece,” but he succeeded in writing what the compositor set up.
The title of a book,—“A Treatise on the Steam-engine; with Theological Investigations on the Motive Power of Heat.” The latter clause might seem appropriate to “Fox’s Book of Martyrs”; but the {p17} transcriber of the title imagined he had written “Theoretical.”
A toast,—“The President of the —— County Agricultural Society,—May he enjoy a grim old age”: the word was corrected to “green,” before the whole edition of the paper was worked off.
We have seen an advertisement of “Mattlebran’s Universal Geography,”—no doubt a very entertaining work.