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/14

viii of exactness ends with correctness of pronunciation. Amateurs in literary composition soon acquire the bad habit of writing carelessly; they spell strange names in two or more different ways; they form capital letters, and even the small lower-case letters, so obscurely that one word may be mistaken for another; they have no clearly defined system, or at least observe none, for the proper placing of capitals, italic, and the marks of punctuation.

There is a general belief that the correction of these oversights is the duty of the printer, and the writer too often throws this duty largely on the compositor and the proof-reader. During the last fifty years there has been no marked improvement in the average writer's preparation of copy for the printer, but there have been steadily increasing exactions from book-buyers. The printing that passed a tolerant inspection in 1850 does not pass now. The reader insists on more attention to uniformity in mechanical details. He notices blemishes in the composition of types more quickly than lapses or oversights made by the author in written expression. Not every reader assumes to be a critic of style in literature, but the reader of to-day is more or less a critic of style in type-setting.

As there is no book of generally accepted authority that lays down a full code of explicit rules for orderly printing, every printing-house that strives for consistency as well as accuracy has found it necessary to make its own code for its own work. The code (or style-card, as it is often called) is constantly needed in every house for the guidance of new compositors and the maintenance of uniformity. But the works done in different printing-houses are much unlike, and different rules have to be made for different kinds of books, newspapers, and trade catalogues. What is correct in one house may be incorrect in another, and rules have to be more or less flexible for special occasions. Yet there