The writer was perfectly justifiable. If no word not in a dictionary could be used, the language could not grow, and there would be many ideas left inexpressible, for want of words. Johnson’s dictionary contained many more words than any preceding work, and each new dictionary since issued has increased the record. This could not have been done if people had not used new words. Although “emollience” is not in any dictionary, there is sufficient authorization in the fact that -ence is used in forming nouns from adjectives in -ent, something that any one may do at any time, just as one may add -less to any noun, as “cigarless,” having no cigar. Emollience is the only possible single word for “character of being emollient (softening).” This is not properly a case of “whim.” The only proper restriction against such neologism is that it should not be indulged unnecessarily, as when there is already existent a good word for the sense to be expressed.

“Barrow-pit” is the only form that principle and commonest usage will justify for this word—but the same principle gives also “advertisement-writer,” “complexion-soap,” “cucumber-juice,” and “road-machinery,” each of which you write as two words. Your decision to use the hyphen in “barrow-pit” is in accordance with all text-book teaching on the subject, and unless such teaching is applicable in all strictly similar cases it is all bad. It can hardly be necessary to reach any such pessimistic conclusion as that expressed in a letter from a country superintendent of schools—“I do not know anything about it, and I do not believe any one else does.” Our grammarians are not all idiots. What possible principle could justify such a difference as “advertisement writer” and “proof-reader” (for “one who writes advertisements” and “one who reads proof”)? If one of them is one word, the other also is one, the only difference being that some such familiar short words are written without a hyphen.

You in a recent edition, speaking of Roman type, used lower-case r. We write to ask what, if any, warrant you have among grammarians or lexicographers for the lower-case initial letter in an adjective of this class. Would it by the same authority be proper to use a lower-case in the word “Parisian,” “Chicago” used as an adjective, etc.?

No rule as to capitalizing has wider acceptance or better basis in principle than that an adjective derived from a proper noun should be capitalized, and “Roman” is such an adjective. However, in the connection this word has in the matter with which we are dealing, the lower-case letter is not wrong, though “parisian,” “chicago” in any use, or any other such use of a lower-case initial letter would be wrong. Reasons will be given after some authorities are cited. The “Century Dictionary” says: “Roman, a. ... [l. c. or cap.] Noting a form of letter or type of which the text of this book is an example”; also, “Roman, n. ... [l. c.] A roman letter or type, in distinction from an italic.” The “Standard,” under the noun, “[R- or r-] A style of ceriphed type. ... also, a black gothic letter, etc.” The “Imperial,” the standard Scotch dictionary, says of the adjective, “applied to the common, upright letter in printing, as distinguished from italic,” and of the noun, “A roman letter or type.” Benjamin Drew, in “Pens and Types,” page 199, in speaking of specimens of old-style type given in his book, says: “The next is a Fac-simile of four roman and three italic Lines.” He says on page 57, in introducing two lists of foreign words: “The roman list is destined to be continually lengthening, while the italic, save as it receives new accretions from foreign sources, must be correspondingly diminishing.” Webster and Worcester missed the point of distinction in usage that was discerned by the other lexicographers, and they capitalize “Roman” and “Italic.” The questioner does not say anything about “italics,” used in the same paragraph with “roman,” yet evidently the two words should be treated alike. In fact, neither word in this use has its literal sense, nor conveys a thought of Italy or Rome. When this literal sense is expressed the words should be capitalized, just as “Parisian” and “Chicago” should be. Webster actually says that “Roman” means “upright, erect,” which is plainly not a meaning showing connection with a proper noun, and, in fact, is not a true definition for the word with which it is given. The word has no real sense other than its literal one, but the literal allusion is so far removed from conscious apprehension in the printing use that it is proper and prevalent usage to write it as a common noun or adjective, just as such form has become prevalent in many other cases, as—

Have our correspondents ever noticed these words in books? The writer of this answer has no hesitation in asserting that “italics” and “italicize,” which have far more literary use than “roman,” will be found with a lower-case initial much more frequently than otherwise; and the same is true of “roman” in printers’ use, which must be looked for mainly in printers’ books. What is here said, however, should not be applied too strictly; the word in question should be capitalized in special work such as that of our correspondents, where probably all similar words have capitals, as Gothic, Doric, Ionic, etc.

SPELLING AND DICTIONARIES.

Kindly permit me to make a few comments. As to “honour, fervour, ardour,” etc., you say that “undoubtedly the American way (i. e., honor, etc.) is better than the other, historically as well as economically.” I suppose that “economically” means the saving of one letter; that I do not consider as worthy of note at all. As to the historical point, the words in Latin are all “honor, ardor, fervor, labor, color,” etc.; but then in French, through which they came into English, they are “honneur, couleur,” etc., so that it seems to me that the u is historically defensible.

“Sceptical” or “skeptical”—a matter of indifference; the hard c represents the Greek kappa in any case. I suppose you spell “speculator,” yet the Greek is σπεκουλάτωρ; so “sceptre” is the Greek σκήπτρον. So we might write “spektakle” if we cared to do so; indeed, many Greek scholars do use k where ordinary people would use c, as “Asklepiad, Korkyra,” etc.

“Ascendant, ascendancy”—the usual plan is to take the letter found in the supine of the Latin verb; thus, “dependent,” from Latin “dependens,” “intermittent,” from Latin “intermittens,” “dominant,” from Latin “dominans,” and so on. On this plan “ascendent” and “ascendency” would be right, as “scando” and “ascendo” make “scandens” and “ascendens.”

You say, “Each of the large dictionaries is worthy of acceptance as final authority in every instance.” Not by everybody, by any manner of means. There are many better scholars than the dictionary-makers. Would you expect Mr. Gladstone, John Ruskin, Andrew Lang, Archbishop Temple, Bishops Lightfoot and Westcott, Dean Farrar, and many others to accept the dictum of a dictionary man in every instance? Why, I do not do it myself. Indeed, though I possess Greek, Latin, and French dictionaries, I have never possessed an English one, and do not much regard them or the people who think them infallible. Educated people in England have no such opinion about dictionaries; in fact, they consider themselves the source of authority in matters of usage and pronunciation. Oxford and Cambridge men and members of the educated classes in England are the sole arbiters in such matters; there is no appeal against them. Richard Grant White thoroughly grasped this and expressed it very well. Just as all classical scholars try to write Attic Greek, i. e., the Greek of the inhabitants of one Greek city, and entirely disregard the millions of other Greeks (even though so eminent as Homer and Herodotus), so all English-speaking people should model their language on that of the educated classes of Great Britain.