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/21

 seem trivial to the reader that are of importance to the printer. To take out u in colour to please one author, to put u in honor to please another, and to compound or to separate meeting words in the proof when these words were not so written in the copy, are discouraging to the compositor and hindrances to quick performance.

The changes sanctioned by dictionaries seem to have been a sufficient warrant for some writers to take other and greater liberties. Books are made here and abroad in which some words are spelled and compounded after one dictionary and other words by another. In compound words editors and proof-readers find opportunity for the exercise of nice critical ability in the making of alterations which they assert are for the sake of consistency, but it is difficult for any one who is not a professional lexicographer to be minutely exact in following all the compoundings of any dictionary. It is still more difficult for a proof-reader to aid the author in the establishment of this consistency when that author uses or rejects peculiarities at his pleasure; for, in spite of all dictionary teachings, the author is the only authority beyond appeal in the printing-house for the spelling and division of words.

The order of an author to disregard all variable spellings in his copy, and to spell according to a specified dictionary, has to be obeyed in the first stage of the work by compositors who have small