BY
LEIGH H. IRVINE
Author of The New California, An Affair in the South Seas, The Writer’s Blue Book, and Other Works.
CROWN PUBLISHING COMPANY
SAN FRANCISCO.
1906.
Copyright, 1906,
SAMUEL EPPSTEIN
DEDICATED TO
THEODORE LOW DE VINNE,
WHOSE WORKS ON TYPOGRAPHY HAVE BEEN
THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE AND INSPIRATION
IN THE PREPARATION OF
THIS LITTLE BOOK.
SOURCES OF AUTHORITY.
[1.] It is to be regretted that every publishing-house does not start on the principle that a thorough system of doing things right should precede the turning out of printed matter; but the press of business is so great, the demands for ‘rush work’ are so many, that system comes last, if at all. Managers are busy with the cash account and the pay-roll, for which reason a great deal is left to chance.
Thus it falls that the negligence, incompetence, or preoccupation of printing-office managers makes good systems of typography the exception rather than the rule. It is a reflection on the art preservative that the slipshod methods and unscholarly composition of the daily newspaper type often corrupt the pages of trade-and class-publications, as well as of magazines and books. See paragraph [45] of this book for an explanation of the use of hyphens in the foregoing sentence. See paragraph [68] for the use of single quote-marks herein.
The hurried work of newspapermen may be partly excused on the ground of haste, yet in another sense it requires no more time to do a thing the right way than to do it the wrong way.