# Correct Composition/Preface

PREFACE
Unfortunately for an American printer, there is no authority beyond appeal for the spelling, division, and compounding of words. Neither in America nor in Great Britain is there an institution, like the Académie Française or the Department of Public Instruction of France, which finally determines disputed questions in orthography. We have many dictionaries of the English language, but they do not fully agree with one another as to the spelling of some words. There are more than sixteen hundred variable spellings, as shown in the Appendix to this work, and each form of spelling has had the approval of good writers.
There are other irregularities in literary and mechanical composition that are even more unfortunate. We have grammars that give us rules for the proper use of capital letters, italic, and the marks of punctuation, but these rules, good as far as they go, are not enough for the guidance of a compositor who has to set types for works much unlike as to form and style. Nor do our high schools thoroughly teach the correct expression of thought in writing. The pupil is taught to be precise in his pronunciation of Latin and Greek as well as of English; to give erroneous accent to a vowel, or improper emphasis to a syllable, stamps him as a vulgar perverter of correct speech; but with too many pupils the practice ​of exactness ends with correctness of pronunciation. Amateurs in literary composition soon acquire the bad habit of writing carelessly; they spell strange names in two or more different ways; they form capital letters, and even the small lower-case letters, so obscurely that one word may be mistaken for another; they have no clearly defined system, or at least observe none, for the proper placing of capitals, italic, and the marks of punctuation.
There is a general belief that the correction of these oversights is the duty of the printer, and the writer too often throws this duty largely on the compositor and the proof-reader. During the last fifty years there has been no marked improvement in the average writer's preparation of copy for the printer, but there have been steadily increasing exactions from book-buyers. The printing that passed a tolerant inspection in 1850 does not pass now. The reader insists on more attention to uniformity in mechanical details. He notices blemishes in the composition of types more quickly than lapses or oversights made by the author in written expression. Not every reader assumes to be a critic of style in literature, but the reader of to-day is more or less a critic of style in type-setting.
As there is no book of generally accepted authority that lays down a full code of explicit rules for orderly printing, every printing-house that strives for consistency as well as accuracy has found it necessary to make its own code for its own work. The code (or style-card, as it is often called) is constantly needed in every house for the guidance of new compositors and the maintenance of uniformity. But the works done in different printing-houses are much unlike, and different rules have to be made for different kinds of books, newspapers, and trade catalogues. What is correct in one house may be incorrect in another, and rules have to be more or less flexible for special occasions. Yet there ​are rules in all codes upon which all careful printers agree, and this treatise is the result of an attempt to combine and classify them.
It should be understood, however, at the outset, that the writer does not propose here a complete system for correct book-making. The planning of a new book, from the determination of the shape of page and proper width of margin to the selection of the style and size of type in which each of its many parts should be set, is a subject too broad to be fairly treated in a limited space. This treatise must be given up to the consideration of the proprieties of undisplayed text composition, which is really the more important part of typography. It is the correctness and the careful arrangement of textmatter more than any novelty in plan, grace in display, or skill in decoration that give distinction to any book. Next to clearness of expression on the part of the author comes clearness in its reproduction by the printer. An incorrect expression may be overlooked in speech or in letter-writing, but a slovenly arrangement of words in type-setting is rated as a serious offence by the critical reader, who practically requires the printer to be more exact or at least more systematic than the author.
It is believed that the methods here advised, although they may differ from those of a few codes, fairly define the fixed practice of the greater number of authors and printers concerning the niceties of type-setting. The writer's experience of more than fifty years as middleman between the author on the one side and the printer on the other warrants his belief that the methods here advised are those that have been sanctioned by usage, and that they are enough to prevent the common errors of book composition. The compositor who heeds these suggestions will prevent the wasting of labor in avoidable alterations, and the inexperienced writer who follows directions about acceptable copy will save the expense of changes that must be made in proof. ​In making the last revision of this treatise, the writer has doubts as to the propriety of assuming to be its author, for the work done is as much the compilation and rearrangement of notes made by other men as it is the outcome of the writer's own long practice of printing. He acknowledges with thanks and the highest appreciation helpful suggestions and contributions made by Mr. Benjamin E. Smith, managing editor of the Century Dictionary and editor of the Century Cyclopedia of Names; Mr. Brander Matthews, professor of English Literature in Columbia University, New York; and Mr. Wendell Phillips Garrison, editor of the Nation. Mr. J. Stearns Gushing and the proof-readers of the Norwood Press have been much interested in the preparation of the work, and especially efficient as collaborators. Last, but not least, thanks are due to Mr. P. J. Cassidy of the De Vinne Press for general supervision, and for the preparation of a table of the variable spellings of the seven leading dictionaries. This last feature should commend the book to every careful writer and proof-reader.
August, 1901.
From Johnson's Typograhia (1824).
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