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/368

354 this foolish correction. It must have been a raw compositor of this class who set Dogs of the Seine for Days of the League, and parboiled sceptic for purblind sceptic. These wild guesses at the meaning of the writer had to be hazarded when writing was indistinct.

Many pages could be filled with illustrations of similar blunders some silly or unmeaning, others frightful or blasphemous but in most instances it is evident that the blunders were the outcome of careless or illegible writing. The compositor who is told to follow copy learns to do so mechanically, even if his rendering does not "make sense."

A critical reader may ask why the master printer does not employ compositors of more intelligence who can correctly divine an obscure word after their reading of the context. This expedient is impracticable. Publishers decided long ago that the composition of books is so largely mechanical that it can be done well enough (after its correction by a reader) by men of limited experience and ability, or even by boys or girls. The pay offered is small; the piece-compositor on book-work does not earn, even at the prices authorized by the trade-unions, as much as journeymen mechanics in other trades. Expert compositors refuse to do the piecework of books; they seek and find steady employment at fixed wages by the week on job-work or as operators of type-setting machines. It follows that book composition by hand has to be done by