[5.] Passing the Blame to Printers. Many writers pass the responsibility and the blame to printers. This is a slovenly and unreasonable course. Printers do not agree, some are incompetent, all are busy with other details than editing copy, and it is not the duty of printers to correct the blunders of writers. Again, a printer may see but a fraction of a given manuscript, and may not know, unless there is an office style-card, what system is the author’s desire. A style-card will show printers the way out of many dark places, and will overcome many of the obstacles presented by the copy of untrained editors and writers. In well-arranged offices, however, the compositor’s right to make changes is a limited one.
It is the duty of typographers to follow copy unless there is a clear inadvertence, such as going too town instead of to town, for example. Writers should understand that printers, though often highly competent to write or edit manuscripts better than those who present them as copy, are too busy at the case or the machine to stop and edit copy, form a style-code, consult dictionaries, verify quotations, harmonize discrepancies, and prevent the blunders of writers in general. If nobody edits copy, one of two things happens—the blunders are put into type for the public eye, or they are corrected by the proofreader. The former course destroys the printer’s reputation, the latter adds to the cost of work.
[6.] Making Copy is an Art. The world’s universities do not teach how to prepare copy for printers. Often college men are not only poor writers of English, but they are as careless of the niceties of typography as are printers in most houses, editors of some publications, ministers, school-teachers, reporters, and public officers. In most manuscripts inconsistencies abound. Numbers, for example, should be spelled out, or written in arabic or in roman numerals, yet the three methods are sometimes seen on one page of copy.
[7.] Uniform Methods Throughout. Abbreviations, the use of italic, of smaller bodies of types, of varying measures, of bold-face, light-faced antique, and like typographical methods for indicating headings, cut-in notes, emphatic words, etc., should be under some definite and sensible plan.
[8.] Points for Writers. Paper for linotype operators as well as that for hand-compositors should be about the size of commercial note, and the writing should run the long way of the page, the reason being that sheets of the commercial note size fit into the machine ‘copy-holder’ very neatly. Good margins should be left at the top and sides, this for side-notes and catch-lines for headings. Names of persons, etc., should be ‘printed out’ carefully in manuscripts, and interlineations should be avoided. Blind hands have always caused infinite trouble in printing-houses. (Consult ‘blind’ in the Standard Dictionary.)
[9.] Style-codes Should be Mastered. Those in authority in publishing-houses and elsewhere should compel reporters, editors, printers, proofreaders, and others whose duty it is to know style to master the office code. In many instances the carelessness of writers adds to the cost of production in every other department of publishing. Strangely, however, many writers assume offhand that anybody can capitalize words correctly and uniformly. Such writers jump to conclusions in the most reckless way imaginable. Their methods and definitions are no more correct than were the definitions given by a band of amateur scientists who described a crab in answer to the great Cuvier’s question. They said a crab was a small, red fish that walks backward. “A perfect definition,” said Cuvier, “except that the crab is not a fish, is not red, and does not walk backward.”
[10.] Office Dictionary Should Govern. One dictionary should be selected as the sovereign guide in every printing-house. If some things in the chosen dictionary seem wrong there should be a list or card of variations from authority. For many reasons the author of this little book prefers the Standard Dictionary to all others. It seems to have, among other things, the most consistent and thorough method of compounding words. Its spellings are the simplest, its pronunciations the most rational. The incomparable work of F. Horace Teall shines in the department that deals with the important subject of compounding English words. Teall’s English Compound Words and Phrases should be before every editor. As elsewhere explained, his system is a little behind the times, owing to a recent movement to solidify words. See paragraph [41].
[11.] What Printers Should Edit. There is a class of matter which printers should edit as they proceed in their work, and this they should do without delay or risk of exceeding authority. Reprint should be made to conform to the office style. Often editors have ample time to read clippings with sufficient care for acceptance, but without time or means to make such excerpts conform to the governing code. Owing to lack of marginal space and space between printed lines, there is no room for certain emendations, the changing of compounds, and the rearrangement of capitals. For these reasons most reprint reaches the printer as it originally appeared in the ‘exchange’ from which it was clipped.
Even if an editor should take pains to change the style of reprint the result would be an unsatisfactory net-work of interlineations, carets, transpositions, rings, and other marks—in short, it would be bad copy. Some editors make it a rule to quote the general style of the clipping, holding that the style of the clipping is as much a part of the author’s personality as are his words and sentences. Unfortunately there are usually so many contradictions and inaccuracies, so many evidences of no style whatever, that it is not a sensible plan to follow reprint copy. The best system is for the compositor to follow the code of his office, and the code should be so well known to him that to follow it would be a pleasure.
In many small offices, where copy-readers or copy-editors are not employed, a knowledge of the style-code by printers and proofreaders is of vital importance. It has been computed by a committee of printers of wide experience that a style-code will save from three to five per cent of the cost of composition. In offices conducted along the lines of chaos the waste of time is great.