OF THE MAKING OF A BOOK
[Illustration: I
SPECIMEN PROOF SHEET
SHOWING MARKS USED IN PROOF-READING.]
II
SPECIMEN PROOF SHEET
SHOWING THE SAME PAGE AS AFTERWARDS CORRECTED IN THE TYPE.
WILLIAM FALCONER.
WILLIAM FALCONER was the son of a barber in Edinburgh, and was born in
1730. He had very few advantages of education, and in early life went
to sea in the merchant service. He afterward became mate of a vessel
that was wrecked in the Levant, and was saved with only two of his
crew. This catastrophe formed the subject of his poem entitled “The
Shipwreck,” on which his reputation as a writer chiefly rests. Early in
1769, his “Marine Dictionary” appeared, which has been highly spoken
of by those capable of estimating its merits. In this same year, he
embarked on the “Aurora”; but the vessel was never heard of after she
passed the Cape: the poet of “The Shipwreck” is therefore supposed
to have perished by the same disaster he had himself so graphically
described.
The subject of “The Shipwreck,” and its author’s fate, demand our
interest and sympathy.--If we pay respect to the ingenious scholar
who compiled the “Marine Dictionary,” how much more interest must we
take in the “ship boy on the high and giddy mast,” cherishing refined
visions of fancy at the hour which he may casually snatch from danger
and fatigue!
OF THE MAKING OF A BOOK
A FEW TECHNICAL SUGGESTIONS
INTENDED TO SERVE AS
AIDS TO AUTHORS
“Look, Lucius, here’s the book I sought for so.”
JULIUS CÆSAR, Act IV, Scene iii.
[Illustration: Publisher’s Colophon]
COMPILED BY THE LITERARY DEPARTMENT OF
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
436 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
1904
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. APOLOGIA 1
II. OF THE MANUSCRIPT 7
III. OF COMPOSITION AND THE PROOFS 19
IV. OF THE PROOF-READING 27
V. OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS 37
VI. OF PUBLICITY 47
INDEX 53
I
APOLOGIA
“Oh, pardon me, my stars!”
_Love’s Labor’s Lost._
Act III, Scene i.
These suggestions were undertaken in the hope that they would not prove
to be a work of supererogation. In some instances these anticipations,
in the nature of things, will be disappointed. There are authors whose
care and precision, in the preparation of their manuscripts, and the
reading of their proofs, may put to shame the work of editors and
printers. As help to such as these, the book is not intended. It is
merely hoped that it may interest them, and that they, perhaps, will
see how it might have been made better.
The art of printing is so largely a mechanical art, with fixed
restrictions as to what can and what can not be done within a given
space of type, that even the experienced writer will sometimes find
himself confronted with results that had not occurred to him as
possible. Perhaps there never yet was made a book in which authors’
errors did not exist, as, indeed, it is probable that there never
existed one which was absolutely correct as to its type. Eternal
vigilance is as clearly the price of correct book-making as of liberty.
For these reasons the experienced author may be able to appreciate the
motives which have prompted these hints.
To authors who are strangers to the details of type-setting and
“make-up,” perhaps no apology for the intrusion will be necessary. It
comes constantly within the experience of publishers to be asked for
information about these matters, and while it is a pleasure always to
give it, a brief conversation or a few letters often fail, on the one
hand to make the point clear, and on the other to cover the necessary
ground.
Within these pages an attempt has been made to set forth the essential
points briefly and yet with some comprehensiveness. The experience
of many years and of many persons has been drawn upon and recognized
authorities have been consulted. Those who have had a share in the
compilation understand how important these points are--how common it is
for the experienced author to neglect them, and how they themselves are
seldom wholly guiltless of infractions of the rules.
F. W. H.
II
OF THE MANUSCRIPT
“I writ at random, very doubtfully.”
_Two Gentlemen of Verona._