The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-11-15
A woMAN's COMPLAINT.
She Can't Get Men to Print Correctly
 What She Writes About Feminine


 She Can't Get Men to Print Correctly
 What She Writes About Feminine
 Frills.
 Many writers have bemoaned the misery of misprints, but few people know how many trials of this descrip ton are endured by the chronicler of
 fashions. Women are proverbially
 meek and uncomplaining, else some of them would have cried out ere this, but their indignation is probably tenn
 rered by the reflection that the suffer ing is inflicted unawares. Millinery has quite language of it's own, and no mere man could master all it's details. Many of the terms are French, and they are not to be found in any diction- ary. New terms for colors and materi- season; the fashion writer has to learn | them from the buyers in the shops, and | if the primer is not sure of the word he has no means of finding out what it is. | Terrible misprints often occur in fash | ion columns, and neither editor nor printer is aware of them. Taking pains does TO good; if the printes bs. l gins to think he is almost sure to go wrong. Take the word shirt, for exam 1 pie. When this first came into use as
 substitute for blouse the printer al- | ways thought his eyes deceived him. | feminine attire, and had not grasped | the fact that bodice of simple con- | struction intended to be worn when boating or bicycling is always called | shirt in contradistinetion to the more l ornate blouse. The sight of the word | gave him pause; he thought it would | not apply to any article of feminine at | tire, and having considered for a mo- | ment he would say, 'She cannot mean 1 shirt!' She means 'skirt'!' The lady writer gnashes her teeth as she reads | that "the skirt is frightened by a neck | tie of 'bleu de ciel,'" and the lady read CTS try in vain to realize the details of
 costume in which the wearer seems to l be possessed by a strange fancy for wearing her necktie round her knees.
 Crepe de Chine" is rarely printed
 correctly. Chine stands for China,
 and the term only means China crape;
 but the printer cannot leave Chine
 alone. He feels it wants an accent | somewhere, and he almost invariably
 tulns the ''i'' into an e." and then 1 sticks an accent on the final ''e." and
 tie word is altered beyond recognition.
 l am always afraid to write "moussel- 1 ine.' l have known it to undergo such | strange transformations. And ther
 are many other words, all most express | sive from milliner's point of view, | which get sadly mauled about before | they see the light. But it is not only ! French words which are thus deformed.
 l have known very simple English words suffer a sea change before they have come to the surface in a dress column. I remember once describing a
 toilet worn by fashionable woman in
 the following terms: This lady, who
 is une vraie elegante, appeared at the
 Grand Prix in an exquisite toilet com | posed entirely of pale blue face-cloth."
 There was no time for me to see the
 proof. and when I saw the article in the
 print I found that the printer had sub | stituted Hong" for face" and that my 1 editor had passed it unheeding. My el- l egant lady was, therefore, described as | appearing in a gown made of long | cloth. Long-cloth! What you make
 nightgowns of! I went with tragic
 face to my editor to protest against this outrage, and he burst into fits of laugh | ter.
 i Dreadful faults of omission occur | sometimes in dress columns. either ] from line being dropped by accident
 CT scored out by the relentless blue pens