Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1914-02-20
TYPoeRAFHIcAL ERRORS"
They Will Occur as Long as Newspa-
nare arm Printed.


What editor has not had irate cor
respondents send him "cussin'" let
ters or come charging into the sane
tum-if there Is any such place-and
jump on him-flguratively speaking
| with both feet for running" that pre-
cious production on the cows cropping
his shrubbery or his neighbors chick
ems flying over his fence!
The epistle may have covered half
column "set solid and the ruinous
damage may have consisted Of mis-
placed comma or pair of transposed
letters of a dropped proposition; but
the aggrieved author refuses to be
mollifed or appeased, says the Tampa
Times. He thinks that printers" are
fools or fiends and either spoiled his
chef d'ouvre for want Of sense or de-
stroyed it out Of pure deviltry.
And then how often do we hear the
casual reader say while glancing over
paper II don't see what in the
world makes these newspaper people
so careless. They make perfect non
sense Of the most serious matters
sometimes when it would have been
just as easy to have it right"
Perhaps If the same censors knew
something Of the work Of the compost
tor and the proofreader they would be
more sparing in their blame and less
severe in their censure.
Just to give them an idea, let us take
few figures: The minimum number
of pages the Times ever publishes is
IL; each page has seven columns,
making S4colurnns in the paper; each
column has 225 lines; each line has an
average of SO letters, punctuation
points and spaces. There are on an
average, in a 12-page issue Of the
Times, about As columns Of reading
matter to approximately 3S columns
of advertisements. In the 46 columns
of reading matter-taking no account
of the advertisements-the are 1O,350
lines and 341,55O letters, etc.
When it is remembered that every
one of these letters IN linotype compo-
sition, such as is used on the Times, Is
made by the touching of a separate
key on the machine-if it was hand
composition every letter and punctu-
alton point and space would have to
be lifted singly from the case and
placed in the stick by the fingers-an
idea Of the ability to error can be
90 ;ot ha 40
touch of a single wrong key means a
wrong letter, the touching of two right
keys in the wrong order means trans
posed letters.
on day after day making 341, $50 sep
arate motions every day-and twice
that number some days-and make
every one of them right? Yet that is
paper the size OF the Times, at it's
smallest, entirely without errors.
Well, it may be said, the proofread-
ers ought to correct the errors. Yes,
that's what we have them for; and
they do correct hundreds. But even
they are human after all, and exercis-
ing the utmost care and scanning
these columns and lines and letters as
closely as possible two and in some
cases three times, errors will get by
the best of them. 1t is probable that the
entirely errorless paper has never yet
been printed. AS long as the human
factor in the preparation Of newspa-
per continues to be the principal one
and that, Of course, must be always
there will continue to be typo
graphical errors"
Now that you know something more
about the opportunities for and the liza
bilities to errors, don't you think that
you will make some allowance hereaf-
ter for the few trifling mistakes that
the linotype man makes and that get
by the proofreader, even though they
may, as you think. spoil your pet pro-
duction?