‘The practice of omitting the grave accent on the preposition A (whatever the reason of it may be) is all but universal.’—Mr. E. G. W. Braunholtz, M.A., Ph.D., Reader in the Romance Languages in the University of Cambridge. [H. H.]
[80] ‘The rule about è instead of é, as in collège instead of collége, should be strictly adhered to, as it now is by most French people. However, é cannot be changed into è unless it have that sound; hence it is not right to say Liègeois, for the sound is that of é; but Liège is correct. Note that Liégeois takes an e after the g.’—Mr. Léon Delbos.
[81] The list is from Gasc’s Dictionary of the French and English Languages: G. Bell & Sons, 1889.
[82] The English practice, never to put a space before a comma, is regarded by the best French printers as bad. ‘This vicious practice’ (i.e. putting no space before a comma), says M. Théotiste Lefevre, ‘which appears to us to have no other motive than the negligence of the compositor, tends unhappily, from day to day, to get introduced also into French composition.’—Guide pratique du compositeur et de l’imprimeur typographes (p. 196 n.) par T. Lefevre. Paris, Firmin-Didot, 1883.—H. H.
[83] St-Germain, Ste-Catherine, l’église de St-Sulpice, St-Hilaire, la St-Jean, are however met with in railway time-tables, &c.
[84] Mm. Km. Hm. These capitals and all the metric contractions are authorized by the French Minister of Public Instruction.—H. H.
[85] That is, words foreign to French.—H. H.
APPENDIX III
WORKS IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE[86]
English compositors called upon to set up German should have clear directions beforehand as to the founts to be used, whether English or German. If the manuscript is in well-written German script, and the compositor is acquainted with the German characters, he will find little difficulty in setting this up in German type. It is otherwise if he has to set German in its own characters from manuscript in Roman characters. This is owing principally to the numerous digraphs and the long and short s’s used. The following rules will be found of use in both cases: