The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1885-12-25

II
Horace Greeley, while no lived. bore
the reputation Of being the greatest Of
American editors, and he also bore the
reputation of turning out about aa
bad manuscript as it was necessary for
any man to do. He once wrote an elab-
crate article in which he found occasion
to quote from Shakespeare the we'll
known phrase "'Tis true; lis pity;
and pity It's, tits true" His proofs
were always sent to him, and tall stories
are told of the way in which no ragged
about and tore things generally when
he read: IT'S two, It's fifty, and It's fifty
two." It is also said that letter writ
ten to man employed ON the staff of
dismissal from Mr.. Greeley, was used as
. letter of recommendation and did
really procure the same gentleman an
editorial position in the West.
A leading metropolitan newspaper at
one time had a very clever London cor
respondent, bnt his handwriting was
wonderful to behold, and it was a
source of great annoyance to the COM
positors, causing them to lose 4 great
deal of time and necessarily reducing
their earnings. The manuscript was
dubbed "Choctaw," and it was always
known by that name in that Office.
But bad manuscript has caused
trouble in numerous ways. A compost
tor will construe it one way, the proof
reader another, and very often neither
will hit upon the proper word, and
hauling over the Goals is the result. The
aiming after sense very often makes
nonsense in the authors opinion, and a
good point is spoiled. In reading an
editorial growl is often hit upon in the
columns of exchanges. One news
paper makes this corrections: "An unfor-
tunate typographical error occurred in
our columns yesterday by which the line
How the State Fusion candidates
are seeking victory was altered
in such way as to have
a very sinister meaning and we regret
that It should have occurred" The word
fusion was printed "prison." Hence
the difficulty. Another paper says:
"Our compOsitors lightly alluded to
'Snakim' for 'Suakim, and print Lon
don instead OF 'SOudan.' In the lang
uage Of gifted Eastern poet, fetch ON
your Arabs. We guarantee that they
will never be able to do any more dam
age after they have been mangledin our
typographical department Another
growl: ''Seven hundred and eighty edi-
torial errors of statistics. history, gcog-
raphy or religious information will slip
past compOsitOrs and proof-rcader unnO-
ticed, but just let joke or flippancy or
other be attempted, and compositor and
proof-reader promptly come to the rescue
and knock it into 'pi.'" The editor
then enters into an elaborate description
of how the cOsnpositor added letter to
word intended as a funny hit, and how
the ''sleepy-eyed proof-reader" passedit
by, and eases his mind further by say
ing: "NOw. if it had been house set on
fire by pair of geese instead of pan
of grease upset on stove, Orwell. if
they had, in fact, run across lot of
foolish errors, the pair of them would
never for an instant have Strengthened
them out But joke! Goodness, amt
they Just death on joker
But few errors that have come under
the writer's eye and been ''caught"
must close the story. George Parsons
Lathrop recently wrote long article in
which the words backyard studies"
were used. Ebay yard stitches" was
put into type as an Improvement on the
original. A headline should have read
s'Tornadoes in the West" but the COM
positor had an eye to the vegetable
kingdom and set ii up Tomatoes in the
West" HE did yeoman's service"
was transformed into '.IIe did Germans
SERVICE" and a sentence in which the
words provided with implements for
turning captured guns against the
enemy occurred was tortured into
provided with implements for turning
captured Jews against the enemy
Brooklyn Times.