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/23

 lete or little-used forms of past tenses and participles, and the use of accents and diacritical marks for words in English, belong to grammar rather than to typography. In the use of these niceties authors and editors have been and will continue to be laws to themselves. For them, and indeed for all who have made the niceties of literature a study, this book was not written. It is intended for the much larger number of compositors and proof-readers who are more or less bewildered by the obscure writing of different authors, especially in words that end in -able and -ible, -ent and -ant, -ise and -ize, -or and -er, and by the conflict of authorities out of their reach. The compositor especially needs a book of reference in which different spellings are presented and the spelling preferred by the author is clearly set forth.

The right of an educated author to spell as he pleases is not to be questioned, but he should write distinctly. As an additional safeguard, he should note on the first page of his copy the name of the dictionary he desires to be accepted as authority. If he chooses to deviate from that dictionary in some words, he should prepare a list of his spellings of these words. This precaution is especially important for his own guidance in geographical and historical names which are differently rendered in foreign languages, as Mentz, Mainz, and Mayence. It should not be expected that a compositor will make any one spelling invariable when