GENERAL REMARKS: CONTAINING SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF, AND ADDITIONS TO,
THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF THE FOREGOING THREE CHAPTERS.
If an author sends his manuscript to the printing-office without
any instructions or directions as to capitalization, punctuation,
etc., the printer will follow his own “office style,” and the work
will be, within certain limits, correctly done; that is, with as
near an approach to uniformity as it is possible for ordinary
fallible mortals to attain. But if the manuscript be accompanied with
numerous “Directions” to the printer, some of these will be forgotten
or overlooked, or become mixed in the minds of compositors and
proof-readers with some set of diametrically opposite “Directions,”—and
so the work will very likely abound in incongruities.
We have known two works to be in hand at the same time, one with
directions to “Capitalize freely,” the other, to “Use capitals
sparingly.” The “Directions” are sometimes quite minute, almost
microscopic; still, it is the duty of the proof-reader to follow them
into the very extremities of their littleness. One writer says, “Put
up ‘eastern,’ ‘western,’ etc., in such cases as this: ‘The purple finch
sometimes passes the cold season in Eastern {p67} Massachusetts, and
even in Northern New Hampshire’”; another directs, “Put compass-points
down, as ‘In northern Nevada.’” If the office style is “Hudson and
Connecticut Rivers,” a direction will be sent in thus: “In all my work,
print ‘Weber and Sevier rivers,’ ‘Phalan’s and Johanna lakes’—not
Lakes.” One author wants “VIII-inch gun and 64-pounder”; another looks
upon this as numerically and typographically erroneous, and insists
on an “8-inch gun and a LXIV-pounder”; still another prefers arabic
figures throughout, and prints an “8-inch gun and 64-pounder”; yet
another likes best the first of the above styles, but wishes a period
placed after the roman numerals, so it shall read, an “VIII.-inch gun”;
one more dislikes “double pointing,” and would retain the period, but
strike out the hyphen. “In my novel, spell ‘Marquise De Gabriac’ with a
big D, and ‘Madame de Sparre’ with a little ‘d.’”
With hundreds of Reports and reports from Institutions and
institutions, from Departments and departments, from Bureaus and
bureaus, trials at law, equity cases, interference cases, Revised
Statutes, and thousands of documents, all as anxious to attract the
public eye as ever Mr. Riddleberger was to catch the Speaker’s, and
rushing compositors and proof-readers and steam-presses with a dizzying
velocity which almost prohibits nicety of execution, it were far wiser
for authors and copyists to attend carefully to the legibility and
accuracy of their manuscripts, than to send to the printer blundering
haphazard pages, accompanied with directions running counter {p68} to
what the writers themselves have exhibited in their manuscripts.
We recollect that a printer once received a manuscript accompanied
with minute directions, extending even to syllabication. It was given
out to the compositors, and a rough manuscript it was; one found in
his take, “One Spanish Mc Krel” and “One caperamber,”—as he and the
others in his chapel read the words,—conundrums which after hard study
of characteristics and comparison of letters were, by an ingenious old
typographic Champollion, solved as “One Spanish mackerel” and “One
café-au-lait.”
If Gunther’s “Catalogue of Fishes, British Museum” is to be written,
it is proper to abbreviate it to “Gunther’s Cat. Fish., Brit. Mus.” An
author who undertook so to write it, jammed the Cat. close to the Fish,
and placed the first period above the line. He should not have been
surprised when he read in his proof-sheet, “Gunther’s Cat-Fish., Brit.
Mus.”,—which, although apparently according to copy, was not “according
to Gunther.”
The use of commas and other pause-marks is to bring out the sense,
and when capitals will subserve the same purpose it is well to use
them also,—whether one finds a printed Rule directing it or not. Thus
Stedman writes:
“In his verse, Emerson’s spiritual philosophy and laws of conduct
appear again, but transfigured. Always the idea of Soul, central and
pervading, of which Nature’s forms are but the created symbols. As in
his early discourse he recognized {p69} two entities, Nature and the
Soul, so to the last he believed Art to be simply the union of Nature
with man’s will—Thought symbolizing itself by Nature’s aid.”
Names of States and Territories, when following names of cities, towns,
and post-offices, are usually contracted; as:
Savannah, Ga.; Brunswick, Me.; San Diego, Cal.; New Orleans, La.;
Plymouth, Mass.
But in any other connection, names of States and Territories are
spelled in full; as:
Mendocino County, California. We crossed Nevada Territory. We visited
Luray Cave, Virginia.
In an office where the employees are accustomed to the above rules,
absolute uniformity would be attainable, if it were not for the
interference of specialists. If, from such office, a book is issued
in which you find “Richmond, Virginia,” and, farther on, “Richmond,
Va.,” you may be sure that a “direction” to “spell out, in all cases,
names of States and Territories” accompanied the manuscript; that one
reader, mindful, as it happened, of the important direction, spelled
“Virginia,” while another, from force of habit, followed the office
style, and made no change from the customary “Va.”; and you may further
conclude, that the author of the work, when examining the proof-sheets,
had himself become oblivious of the direction he had given.
We have known more than forty special directions {p70} to be sent to
a printing-office with the manuscript copy of one book. An author may
fancy that numerous minute rulings will ensure uniformity and beauty to
his book; but the chances of discrepancy and mistake are increased in
direct ratio to the number of such of his rulings as run counter to the
office style. His “more requires less,” but produces “more.”
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