Morning journal and courier., 1885-03-12
TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS.
How Sentences are Reconstructed by
 GuiIeless Printers.

From the New York Times
 1 The typographical errors found in newspa- I pers, magazines and books form an mex I haustible subject of discord. In nearly eve l ry issue of a newspaper something "crops | up' to harrow the soul of the editor and to particularly vex the temper of the author of ] the article in which the error occurs. The reporter who takes pride in the beauty of | his penmanship is usually extremely sensitive with regard to ''bulls," and he frequently suffers the humiliation of perverted sen 5ence in his compositions. The compositor and proof-reader seem to consplre to render his work ridiculous. It is a melancholy fact that an author who writes most plainly suf- fers more at the hands of the compositor and
 Intelligent proof-reader" than careless
 writer. The reason for this is that with
 plain manuscript no care is necessary to read
 it, and those who handle it apt to be-
 come careless, while with "Choctaw" or
 Greek as bad manuscript is called in the
 composing room, much time is spent i'll deci-
 phering it, and it nearly always comes out all
 right.
 few specimens of what can be done in
 the way of twisting and turning sentences
 and of tue misconception of what the author
 really wrote would perhaps prove interesting
 A religious newspaper short time ago, re-
 ferring to the Rev. Dr. Noah Hunt Schenck's s
 death; quoted concerning a different type of
 minister from the lalnented Episcopalian di-
 vine. Tennyson's lines: ''White-handed,
 snowy banded priests" The types made it,
 ''White- headed, snowy-bearded priests" A
 daily paper, giving an account Of Masonic
 lodge of sorrow, spoke of "the mourners be-
 hind the coffee and the beer," instead of the
 ''coffin and the bier," and gravely stated
 that five thousand spectators were pres
 ent," meaning, of course, "spectators.' In
 .n obituary of the celebrated Captain Ryn- ders, newspaper said that "he married his
 surviving widow in 1857" Another news
 poDsr inCuira5. tsHOw ahoTt his other Wi6- ows?"
 ''At the funeral of Ouney Geyeyhow,"
 Memphis paper says, ''the two wives of the
 deceased and their partisans engaged in nu-
 merous fights for the place of mourning next
 the hearse.'' Mir. Geoghegan's fame seems
 not to have reached Tennessee. A newspa-
 per made a vain effort the other day to para
 graph the ''opium joints" Opinion joints"
 however, struck the "typo" and proof reader
 as a handsomer expression, and so it was all
 lowed to stand. A Massachusetts paper re-
 gently contained this item: "The historic
 South church at Worcester celebrated it's one
 hundred and sixty-ninth anniversary last
 night with supper, followed by remarks by
 the present and past pastors" It was fortu-
 nate to have some of the past pastors pres
 ent, but to assume that the gentleman who
 preached there one hundred and sixty nine
 years ago took snpper with them is too ghost ly for belief. A Chicago newspaper not long ago informed it's readers that the ministers of that city spent the hour of the usual meet ing in listening to mortality. reports from the churches." Of course "monthly' re- ports was intended.
 A religious newspaper has this grievance against secular contemporary: ''One of the daily papers mentioned the other day that at the Monday meeting Of Reformed pastors paper was read entitled 'Ecce Je~ sus.' As no such paper had been read, in quiry was made to the source of the re- port and it was ascertaned that the amateur reporter had been told that it an exege- sis. As he had never before heard the word. l but had heard of Ecce Coelum, Ecce Deus, | &c., he readily mistook exegesis for Ecee Jesus and so published it." Many funny things have appeared in type, some of which the argus eyed proof-reader discovered and corrected, but unfortunately, many more were allowed to be printed. It is not un- common to see the word Macduff appear in type as s'Mike Duff, D ''Drunkards' conven- tion for Dunkards, and 'SFaros' Hall for Tara's Hall. A correspondent no doubt thought he carefully wrote "Last Sleep of Argyll" but between the compositor and proof reader and the substitution of an for an 8 in the first word and an h for an 1 in I the second, the reader quite lost the beauty of the authors reference A b for an m in speaking of the good old hymn, ''Nearer, my l God, to Thee," brought punishment on the proof reader who temporarily lost the lynx like qualities of his eye. "Pyrotechnie
 school' for polytechnic; House of ''Coons" l for Commons, ''curious tricks for crimson trunks, ':Coroners' 7" Journal for Courier
 Journal, stJabus Carson" for Julius Caesar, General Theodore Sem, for General Theo- logical Seminary, 'Athletic Dutch police
 man" for Atlantic Dock policeman, :sO'Ha-
 wa" for Ottawa, caught hot ':livern for
 liner are specimens of the different ways in which worthy authors have had their pen manship misconstrued.
 In an article in which the author supposed he was making as lucid an explanation of the comet as was possible, he wrote: "The nucleus of comet bears to it's nebu1ous and expansive. tail," but the printer thus i'm proved it: ''The nucleus of cornet bears to it's nebulous and expressive tune."