St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1890-12-26
The AWFUL PRINTER.
Brief Reference to the Misery
He Has Caused at Vari-
Gus Times.
Eany a Time He Has Broken
the Heart of a Budding
Byron.
Ee Has Also RopeleSsly Dr.
Vided Families and Ruin
ed Regulations.
And All Because the Little
Types Are Sometimes
Wrongly Placed.

WHEN lie ildu WRITTEN L KISSED ller un-
der the silent stars" were no more UNI
kind than when they changed another
budding versitier's line, 'fSee the pale
martyr in Il sheet of fire, Ito ".See the pale
martyr with his shirt on fire." says the
Chicago Herald. Such fragrant errors
are quite enough to make an author
join most heartily in the sentiments ell
tertained in the following q%uatrain from
the pen of a young lady who had been
crucitied in her first-published poem:
wish l had that editor about a half a min
ute;
I'd bang him to his hearts content. and with
On h begin it;
Id jam his body, eyes and bones, and spell it
with a d.
And SEND him to that hill of his; he spells 1t
with an e.
And Thomas Moore happily hits off
the liability of printers to commit such
errors, in the following lines:
But It's dreadful TO think what provoking
mistakes
TIL vile country press in ones prosody
makes.
For you know, dear-I may without vanity
hint
Though an angel should write, still It's devils
must print;
Anu YOU Gdl I Inllk Wl9I havoc these de-
mons sometimes
. Choose TO make of ones sense, and. what's
worse, OF ones rhymes.
But a week or two since, in my ode upon
spring,
Which l meant to have made a most beauti-
full thing,
Where | talked of the "deWdrop from freshly
blown roses"
The nasty things made it from freshly
blown nosesl'
And once when 10 please nv cross aunt I
had tried
To concentrate some saint OF her CLIQUE
who'd just died,
Having said he had tak'n up in HEAVIER his
poSiuon.n
They made it, he had taken I'D to heaven
his physician
Some very truthful observer has said
that it is easier to tell a lie than it is to
catch a fish. Printers all believe that it
is easier to make an error than it is TO
make a clean proof sheet. However,
persons who know something of the
awful character of much of the COPY
that printers are expected to correctly
declpher do not think it strange that
there are so many typographical errors.
but marvel that the number is not much
greater. Yet authors whose manuscript
can be likened 10 nothing better than
the autograph of "a dying spider which
mas paid a SurreptltiouS visit to the ink
bottle" are often apparently much sur
prlsed and distressed when they find
That the typeSetter and proof reader
nave not correctly guessed their mean
ing III every line, or have misplaced a
comma i'll a dozen pages that may have
been written wholly without any regard
to the rules for punctuation.
An author whose penmanship looks
like the marks that might be made by a
kangaroo jumping out of a mud puddle
and splaShing a pillow sham with its
tail has but little right to complain when
the printer changes the appearance of
his literary offspring to such an extent
that he does not recognize it as a child
of his imagination. Where the copy is
poor there is some excuse for typo
graphical errors. But, alas! the printer
does not always have this resource to
which he may attribute his errors. At
the present day a great amount of type
written copy is placed in his hands,
which greatly lessons his likelihood to
commit errors, but charges those he
does make solely to his carelessness.
"There is a blind spot in every eye'' is
a saying that seems to have been proven
quite true with proof readers. Notwith-
standing the extraordinary amount of
pains taken to produce perfect
books - those entirely free from
typographical errors-it is very prob
able that the number of such in
existence to-day might be counted
upOn the fingers of both hands. Among
the books believed to be perfect is an
Oxford edition of the Bible. A stand
ing reward of a guinea for each and
every error found in it, which remained
unclaimed for years, was finally won by
a reader whose eyes were sharper than
had been those Of the thousands of
others who had read it before him.
Henc we learn that, be as careful as
we will, we must expect to see some er-
rorS creep in. The earlier editions of
the Bible contained thousands of errors,
the seriousness Of which helped to
hasten a reform in the matter. Among
the earlier attempts to produce a perfect
edition of "Os Lusiadas'' of Camoens.
by Don joe SOuZa. in 1917. This anna
teur spared no prodigality of cost or
labor, and fattered himself that, by the
assistance of Didot, not a single typo-
graphical error should be found in that
splendid volume. But an error was
afterward discovered in some of the
copies. occaSiOned by a letter becoming
misplaced during the working of the
sheets. But this was an accident or
misfortune rather than an erratum.
The celebrated FouliSes, of Glasgow.
attempted to publish a work which
Should be a perfect specimen of typo-
graphical accuracy. Every precaution
was taken to secure the desired result.
Six experienced proof-readers were en-
Dloyed, who devoted hours to the read
ing OF each page. After it was thought
IN No nnIfnnr ~ xHnc arAA - = l.
hall of the university, with a notice that
a reward of $50 would be paid TO n
II who could discover an error. Each
page was allowed to remain two weeks
where it had been posted before the
work was printed, and the publish
ers thought they had attained the OBJ
lect for which they had been striving.
But when the work was issued it was
discovered that several errors had been
committed, u of which was in the first
line of the first page. Many a GOOD
work has been sadly dis6gured by the
negligence of authors in correcting their
proofs; others, again. are so dlligent
that they make unnecessary al
teratlonS. Sometimes one vol
ume grows into two by correc-
mons and additions. and some
tunes, and generally more to the credit
Va ehN ou1hOI, wv tOiull6S. uDOU q very
careful reading and cutting out of weak
n useless parts, shrink into n
Virgil was eleven years correcting and
improving his "Kneid," and then
wished to destroy it before he died be-
cause he still felt dissatisfied with if.
EASY composition, but laborious cor
recting," was Burns own description
OF his writings. The manuscript of Ju-
Illus Scaliger was so carefully prepared
that the print correspondent to it page
for page, line for line. Think of that.
we very unreasonable beings who give
the printer a crumpled mass of paper
covered with warped rainbows and
spoiled flashes of Lightning" and ex-
pect him to produce an article smooth.
perfect and pleasing. in every mart
Burke, the celebrated orator, was SO ey.
ceedingly careless in regard to his man.
uscrlpt that u of his most spirited
illusions received so many corrections
and interlineatfons that the com.
positors had to take down the types.
and reset the whole. Ben Johnson
was once requested to revise a Sermon
full of errors. but he declined the task.
and recon mended that it be sent tn the