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The Century Dictionary helps an intelligent study of color by its clear definitions and cross-references to, , and ,—leaving no excuse for those who would confuse these three qualities or treat a degree of any quality as the quality itself.

Obscure statements were frequent in text-books before these new definitions appeared. Thus the term "shade" should be applied only to darkened values, and not to hues or chromas. Yet one writer says, "This yellow shades into green," which is certainly a change of hue, and then speaks of "a brighter shade" in spite of his evident intention to suggest a stronger chroma, which is neither a shade nor brighter luminosity.

Children gain wrong notions of "tint and shade" from the so-called standard colors shown to them, which present "tints" of red and blue much darker than the "shades" of yellow. This is bewildering, and, like their elders, they soon drop into the loose habit of calling any degree of color-strength or color-light a "shade." Value is a better term to describe the light which color reflects to the eye, and all color values, light or dark, are measured by the value-scale.

"Tone" is used in a confusing way to mean different things. Thus in the same sentence we see it refers to a single touch of the brush,—which is not a tone, but a paint spot,—and then we