Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-12-07
HE CORRECTS :
OTHERS ERRORS
Many Newspapers Have Been
Saved Libel Suits
By Him.

your morning newspaper are the
1 fault of the proofreader-though he
| is always blamed. He is usually OF
a retiring, shrinking disposition, hid
den away in a corner Of the COM
posing room, anathema to editors
reviled by compositors, badgered by
the foreman and worried by the
copyholder; but ofttimes blessed by
the advertising expert, Tor whom
he does yeoman service frequently
by pointing out obvious errors in
the advertising copy, recent
| catch" of the latter kind being the
statement that Pocahontas was
! the wife of Capt. adam" Smith,
| which obviously was not true.
The proofreader knows every
thing, or is popularity supposed to.
How many inches ofsrain fell in the
Lake Tchad region the year the
Germans annexed the Kamerooms!
Who represented Oshkosh i'll the
year of the first gold, rush? What
is the population of the Solomon
islands? Where is the Sultanate
of Hedjaz? What is the family name
of the royal house of Great Britain?
These and many other more or less
intricate and uncommon questions
are thrust at him in the course of
his tour of duty and ifhe does not
! know them offhand he has always
recourse, unhappy man, to that wade
mecum of the newspaper Office, the
World Almanac, or the I'm
abridged" These two volumes are
at once his Bible and encyclopedia,
and it is the happy faculty of know
ing just where to look fol informa-
ton that constitutes one Of his chief
virtues and accentuates his value
to the newspaper that employs him,
for information is wanted IN hurry
whenever it is called for in the pro-
duction of the daily press.
Sum of Human knowledge"
He is the office authority on gram
mar, has a profound knowledge OF
politics. ancient and modern history,
botany. mathematics, astronomy,
mythology. music, art, the drama,
heraldry. geology, geography, the
occult, the fourth dimension and the
differential calculus He must be a
student OF good English, know some
thing of the common phrases used
in Latin, German, French, Spanish,
Hebrew and Scandinavian; have a
working knowledge of all the feast
and fast days of all the religious
bodies: the location of every river
Of importance under the sun, includ-
ing the River of Doubt, the length
and cost of the Suez and Panama
canals; be familiar with Cervantes-
Shakespeare and all the writers of
note since the birth of literature and
history.
Theoretically the duties of the
proofreader are limited to narrow
sphere, actually they comprehend
the sum of all human knowledge.
He, cannot be a good prootreader
unless he has read widely and deeply
and is possessed of a varied as
sortment of knowledge, and above
all, he must be accurate, He keeps
tabs on the work of the editor, the
ad-man and the printer. and his
watchfulness has saved many man
his job and his newspaper many
libel action. He is not infalllble,
though he would like you to believe
he is-the infallible proofreader has
not been lborn-and is correspond
,ingly grateful when someone points
out to him, in time, something he
has passed over. For he does not
catch every error, OF course, but he
does get we'll over 90 per cent OF
them and that his job is an impera..
tive necessity would be admitted It
we could see many of the samples
OF chirography that are sent III to
be set up in type; the morning news
paper would be a curiosity, indeed,
1T were printed according to the
ideas OF manv correspondents, and
the photography of even the college
president is not above reproach.
He Must Be Speedy.
SPEED is essential in his work.
He has, at times of pressure, to race
through full newspaper column IN
seven or eight minutes, correct bad
grammar, endeavor to catch all the
typographical errors, alter some du-
bious punctuation marks, keep his
brain alert for errors of fact the
while he gleefully pounces upon
some irregular division of word.
Multiply this for each hour and for
the major part OF eight hours
steady grind and the job is not SO
easy as 1t looks. Small wonder that
typographical errors creep into the
paper, for the proofs get only one
hurried reading. His colleague on
the linotype machine most nearly
associated with him is usually a
good fellow, however, and when he
discovers the aforementioned slips
he marks a ring around them for
the purpose of acquainting the ac-
tual corrector of the type with the
fact that there is an extra line NOT
called for by the proofreader, makes
the correction and goes on tapping
the keys of his machine--it is all in
the nights work, and helps to make
a clean sheet.
How easy it is for a second per-
son, after all the apparent errors
have been corrected, to find another
enc! It. is easy to mark an error
aud miss another in the same line,
and the careful man charged with
making the corrections the proof
reader marks sometimes errors and
mistake gets into the paper that
way. The linotype machine is yet
far from perfect and occasionally
matrices refuse to come down in
the right place, and when thin let
ter like q" or '1' fails to make its
proper connection the wise proof
reader will go over the sentence, or
even the whole paragraph, second
time, and often find a word or so
with the thin letter missing. The
human element, too, fails at critical
times and the compositor charged
with inserting the corrected lines
of tp,,a doae not rpfice that yUropo