Page:The practice of typography; correct composition; a treatise on spelling, abbreviations, the compounding and division of words, the proper use of figures and nummerals by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914.djvu/13



for an American printer, there is no authority beyond appeal for the spelling, division, and compounding of words. Neither in America nor in Great Britain is there an institution, like the Académie Française or the Department of Public Instruction of France, which finally determines disputed questions in orthography. We have many dictionaries of the English language, but they do not fully agree with one another as to the spelling of some words. There are more than sixteen hundred variable spellings, as shown in the Appendix to this work, and each form of spelling has had the approval of good writers.

There are other irregularities in literary and mechanical composition that are even more unfortunate. We have grammars that give us rules for the proper use of capital letters, italic, and the marks of punctuation, but these rules, good as far as they go, are not enough for the guidance of a compositor who has to set types for works much unlike as to form and style. Nor do our high schools thoroughly teach the correct expression of thought in writing. The pupil is taught to be precise in his pronunciation of Latin and Greek as well as of English; to give erroneous accent to a vowel, or improper emphasis to a syllable, stamps him as a vulgar perverter of correct speech; but with too many pupils the practice