Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1867-02-14
TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS.

Mr.. w. L. Stone, of New York, lately deliver
ed very interesting and valuable lecture IN that
city, upon the "Early History of Newspapers in
America" In the course of thelecture occurs the
following:
The New York Gazette was commenced by Way
man. In l776 Wayman was arrested and imprls-
oned for contempt of the Assembly, upon no 9th
charge than that of two typographical errors IN
printing the speech of Sir Henry Moore, the Gov
ernor Of the Colony. One of these errors consist
ed in printing the word erer for erer by reason OF
which the meaning of the sentence was reversed.
Nothing can be more annoying to authors and pub
fishers than errors of the Press; and yet those who
are unskilled in the art Of printing can scarcely
conceive the difficulty of avoiding them. To ar
rive at ordinary accuracy in daily newspaper re-
quires the reading and correction of at least two
proofs; and even then an editor who has not be-
come cnsc-hardened by long endurance, will often
be shocked at the transformation of sense into non
sense, or the numbering Of one OF his happlest
conceits or the plucking of the point from one OF
his neatest paragraphs, by typographical error.
In the early stages of the art Of printing, errors
were far more numerous than in books Of modern
execution. Itwas then very common for volume
Of ordinary size to contain page upon page OF ezra
ia at the close. One of the most remarkable in
stances of this kind was the curious treatise of Ed
ward Leigh, on Religion and Learning, publish
ed in 1856. At the close of the work were three
folio pages of corrections in very minute type 1t
is singular fact that the edition of the Latin Yul-
gate, by Pope Sixtus ", although carefully super
Intended, sheet by sheet, by His Holiness, has
ever remained without rival in Typographical
inaccuracy. Still more curious was the fact that
the Pope, in the plentudc of his ponti6cal infali-
bility prefXed to the first volume a bull OF eX-
communication against any and every printer who,
in reprinting the work, should ever make any al
terations in the text. Among instances of typo
graphical errors the lecturer gave the following -
A lad in printing Office, who knew more about
type-setting than he did Of the Greek mythol-
ogy, in looking over poem they were print
ing came upon the name of Hecate, one of the
lady divinities to the lower world, occurring in a
line like this ''She shall reign the Hecate Of the
deepest Hell" The boy, thinking he had dis:
covered an error, ran to the master printer, and
inquired eargerly whether there was e in cat
"Why, no, you blockhead was the reply. Away
went the boy to the press-room and extracted the
Objectionable letter. But fancy the horror of both
poet and publisher when the poems appeared with
the lne-"She shall reign the He Cat of the deep
est He'll" This, however, was not 50 bad as the
manner in which the printers treated Miss Landon.
In speaking Of it she says And when had
written full blown roses the nasty things made
it "full blown noses" Benjamin Franklin once
putting to press ''form" of the Common Prayer,
the letter in the following passage dropped out
unperceived by him, we shall all be changed in
the twinklng Of an eye" When the book appear
ed, to the horror of the devout worshippers, the
passage read: I'VE shall all be hanged in the
twnking of an eye" Franklin has been suspect
ed of having done this intentionally, but it appears
to me without good reason. But after all, when it
is considered Of how many separate and minute
pieces of metal book form or the page of a news
paper is composed, the wonder is that the errors
of the Press are not far more numerous than they
are A single page of one of our largest papers
cannot contain less than 3O5 900 separate pieces of
metal each of which must be nicely adjusted in its
own proper place. Or error and confusion will en-
sue