PREFACE TO
THE ELEVENTH EDITION

In his Preface to the First Edition of this work, which appeared in 1905, F. Howard Collins concluded as follows: ‘Whilst probably no one will agree with everything contained in this book, I hope it may be found that the number of marginal notes needed to bring it into accordance with the views of those who use it will be as few as could be expected, considering the difficulty of the subject-matter, and that fact that it is, I believe, the first time it has been thoroughly and systematically investigated in any country.’

This ‘subject-matter’ was not only difficult but varied. Collins included, within the covers of a book of modest size, almost everything to which an author or a printer might wish to refer—spelling, difficult proper names, punctuation, italicization, capitalization, abbreviations, printing technicalities, foreign words and phrases.

In the sixty-eight years that have passed since that first edition there have been dictionaries and specialist reference books in profusion, and may entertaining and instructive volumes on the current use and abuse of English. But there has never been anything quite like Collins. Without pretending to rival the length and breadth of the monumental dictionaries, or the detailed information, in narrower fields, of highly technical works, this book does indeed serve the everyday needs of authors and printers. It has been through ten editions, and undergone constant revision. There have been substantial corrections, additions, and subtractions. But the purpose and the style are still the same—a striking tribute to the judgement and prescience of its first editor.

The problems of selection and accuracy which he faced are still with us. This new edition is perhaps the most extensive of the revisions so far. The world is changing rapidly, and the English language with it. Room has had to be found for new ideas, new words, new measurements, new sets of initials, new political and geographical adjustments, and new habits of speech and writing.

In order not to make the book unwieldy, there have had to be excisions. There were obsolescent words, defunct societies, proper names which had lost their importance, abbreviations no longer in use, and a superfluity of foreign printing terms. All these have gone, unless they seemed historically significant or likely to occur in books still in use. There are natural changes or emphasis, too—fewer words from Afrikaans, for instance, and more Americanisms.

This is an English dictionary, and when a foreign word has become anglicized we see no reason to insist on retaining or reverting to the strict foreign form. For instance, ‘librettos’ is now English, and ‘libretti’ is not; ‘kapellmeister’ is sufficiently English to be printed in roman, and therefore does not need the German capital letter; ‘mêllée’ is so familiar that it no longer needs italic—indeed, we shall soon have to abandon the accents and adopted the American ‘melee’. It is the same with geographical names: to use ‘Samarqand’ instead of ‘Samarkand’ would be merely pedantic. These judgements recognize that language is a growing, changing thing, and that occasional discrepancies between this latest edition of Collins and earlier editions of other dictionaries are inevitable.

Collins, in 1905, made no attempt ever to sit on the fence. His aim was to give a reasonable verdict, in the interests of consistency. To quote from his original Preface: ‘Where a choice has been made between two or more forms of any word, it should not be concluded that I consider the other forms wrong, but merely that the weight of evidence has led me to select the one given.’

Pursuing the same policy, I have tried to assess, for example, how far a word has now advanced along the road which leads from ‘rear guard’, through ‘rear-guard’, to ‘rearguard’. Developments like these are often rapid, and need constant review, so that even the preparation of this eleventh edition, a work of nearly five years, has come seem like painting the Forth Bridge.

Newspapers are a major source of innovation and change. One usage in particularly should be mentioned, the omission of full points between the letters of abbreviations like I.A.A.M. This is understandable in the brief headlines and narrow columns of a newspaper, but need not normally be imitated in a book. However, many organizations are indifferent to the form of their abbreviations, and with some the un-pointed form is well established, especially when the initials make a pronounceable word, like ‘Unesco’. Indeed, newly formed societies often choose a name with this in view, like an American feminist ‘Society for Cutting Up Men’; here the development, if any, will be from ‘S.C.U.M.’, through ‘SCUM’, to ‘Scum’.

This new edition contains very brief definitions of all but the simplest words, intended more to identify the words than to give a complete account of their meanings. But an effort has been made to get technical meanings accurate and to bring scientific phrases up to date.

I am indebted to many members of the printing and publishing staffs of the Oxford University Press for their valuable and expert advice, especially on printing terms. R. W. Burchfield, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary Supplement (new edition), made very helpful suggestions at an early stage in the revision, and G. N. S. Hunt of the Publisher’s staff has been available for consultation throughout my work.

Finally, I want to thank many users of The Authors and Printers Dictionary for corrections and suggestions based on the earlier editions. Revisers of this dictionary will always be very grateful for any criticisms or contributions which may add to its usefulness.

STANLEY BEALE

1973

 

 

AUTHOR AND PRINTER¹

The effect of the rise of manufacturing and other costs upon the book trade is a matter of very general speculation and concern. Those especially who are interested in the production of learned books, technical books, and all books which command a limited market, are asking how such books are to be published, and how the impoverished professional man is to buy them. If it were assumed that the purchasing powers of this class were stationary, which is a sanguine view, and that the cost of production were, or might be, no more than twice what it was, it should still seem that production would be halved and the price (of so many hundred pages) doubled. For there are only two ways in which the cost of a book can be substantially reduced: by increase in the number of copies printed and sold, or by reduction of bulk. It is probably, indeed, that the English-reading public will accustom itself to flimsy, perhaps even to paper bindings; and the public will certainly have to put up with smaller and closer type, narrower margins, fewer pictures. But such economies, though not unimportant, will not make any vital difference. You cannot make books cheap by making them nasty. The necessity for limiting prices can only be met by greater popularity for by fewer words. Novels, accordingly, may be expected to be shorter, less numerous, and more widely advertised. It is enormously more profitable to all concerned to sell one article in tens of thousands than many articles in hundreds; and even before the war it is known that some retailers offered the public nothing but the best-sellers of the season.

But there were very many books, addressed to a public limited and incapable of rapid or artificial expansion, which it was yet possible to publish without subvention and without risk of serious loss. These are books of which the future is doubtful: books on the sciences; books for doctors, chemists, and lawyers; biographies; historical treatises; critical editions of the classics, English and foreign; school-books which must take their chance in free competition with numerous rivals. The prices of such books cannot be advanced beyond a point without ultimate injury to their sale or reduction of their number.

If the effect of economic pressure is to make authors study compression, and readers, attention, the gain will be great. The prolixity of modern writing, fostered by cheap paper and print, by the habit of making books out of articles and lectures, by the use of typewriters and stenographers, is a positive evil; and it has so reacted upon most readers that they have become incapable of assimilating close thought or a terse style.

These are the grave ills and heroic remedies. The purpose of the present article is to call attention to some minor palliatives, the application of which may be assisted by information in some degree technical. When an author has made a book, he may study economy in his preparation of the printer’s copy and in his treatment of the printer’s proof; and these things he often performs indifferently from lack of knowledge which might be made more accessible. Knowledge, however, is not all; some change of heart is required. We have grown accustomed to write so fast, and to supply copy at so short notice, that we are not disposed to treat as a grave responsibility the committal of manuscript to be set up. As such, however, it must be considered. The operation of setting type has always been very much more laborious and costly than that of copying and recopying manuscript or typescript; and it is now more than ever imperative that the writers of learned and scientific books should in their own and their colleagues’ interest aim at finality in the copy they furnish to the printer. Books exist which give useful hints on points of typography, such as the use of italic and capitals and the conventional signs used by printers. But with most of these experienced authors are familiar; what is wanted is the resolution to make copy which can be easily set and which will not reveal incongruities and obscurities when exposed to the stronger light which beats upon the printed page. Authors sometimes plead in extenuation that their writings ‘look different’ when they are printed; but it requires no great mental agility to perceive that a printer must be shown where a paragraph is to begin or a footnote be placed, and that though he may safely enough be left in charge of spelling and punctuation, he must not be expected to make references or abbreviations uniform. A book is not set by a single compositor.

Typewriting is to be recommended not so much because it facilitates the compositor’s task as because it approximates more nearly than manuscript to the regularity and uniformity of print; and so enables most writers to view what they have written with a more synoptic eye and to grasp more readily the relation of chapters and paragraphs. Sentences will bear printing if they will bear reading aloud; transpositions and interlineations can be made clear if the writing is not cramped; and it is as easy to italicize references in manuscript as in typescript or in proof. A golden rule is never to spare paper. In a book of any complexity the important thing is that the arrangement should be clear; and nothing is so destructive of clearness as economy in paper. If only one side is used, and ample space left for revision between the lines and in the margin, there is room for alteration, and even for transposition and interlineation, without serious loss of clarity. A manuscript so prepared can, if necessary, be easily read and marked by a second eye, and the compositor’s path made smooth. If copy is crabbed, so that it cannot be read without an effort, there is always a temptation to fling it at the printer and see what happens.

Footnotes, it may be mentioned, are in small type, and therefore set by a different compositor. They should be written on the same page as the text (otherwise mistakes in placing them are likely to be made), but at the foot of the page, and clearly marked.

Authors are often unnecessarily costly in their proof correction because they do not understand what kinds of alteration are more or less expensive. In general, correction, if necessary at all, should be regarded as a necessary evil. An author who is tempted by the specious mutability of a printed proof should ask himself, when verbal changes occur, whether the gain in point or elegance is worth the human labour it will occasion.

If a correction is irresistible, it should be considered what will be its result. Even an apparently trifling addition often produces in closely set type a dislocation which ends only with the paragraph, and therefore means shifting hundreds of minute pieces of metal. If the paragraph ends with a full line, the addition may mean a whole new line, and so involve shifting one line from each page to the next until the end of a chapter brings relief. (Meanwhile the page-references in the index are perhaps going wrong; or a footnote may be on the wrong page.) Such dislocation could often be restricted if an author would be careful to make compensatory changes where necessary: it is not difficult, by counting letters and spaces, to guess how much should be removed to make room for an insertion. There are other possibilities: a line may be saved by ‘running on’ footnotes, by stealing space between quotations, paragraph-headings, or the like. Authors very seldom do this, because they hardly know how; the printer does not complain, because correction is in the day’s work and is paid for like the rest; the publisher indeed has an interest in removing costly misunderstandings, and often does intervene; but problems of this kind are unimportant taken singly, and are not readily solved by correspondence.

More serious dislocation is caused by more extensive addition, deletion, or transposition. Suppose that a chapter extends from page 1 to page 20, the next chapter beginning a fresh page, and that a new paragraph is added on page 2. If the new paragraph occupies no more space than the blank on page 20, the correction will affect one chapter only; but it will affect every page of that chapter, in the same way as the intrusive line imagined above, but in a greater degree. This is called overrunning.

If, again, the new paragraph is so long that the chapter bursts its banks and overflows on to page 21, then the next chapter will have to begin on page 22 instead of on page 21; and page 23 (the old 22) will, e.g., be found to have the right-hand headline when it should have the left-hand; and every page to the end of the book will have to be moved on. This is a process less simple than shuffling sheets of paper; to understand it, it is necessary to reflect how a book is printed. If the reader will take a piece of paper, fold it three times as an octavo sheet is folded, number the pages from 1 to 16, and then flatten it out again, he will have on each side a map, as it were, of the forme of type, containing eight pages locked together with ‘furniture’, from which one side of the sheet is printed. In the example supposed, pages 21–32 have to be converted into 22–33 (limiting the problem to the first sheet exploded). Now of these pages, 21, 24, 25, 28, 29, and 32 belong to one forme, pages 22, 23, 26, 27, 30, and 31 to the other. To reconstitute the sheet both formes will have to be broken up, the type pages transferred and rearranged; and since each page is made up of thousands of pieces of lead in unstable equilibrium,² the chances of disturbance or loss are such that when the shock is over a reader must go through the whole and make good any damage. This is reimposition. All these processes mean the passage from one to another department of the printing house not only of the proof, but of the type; 16 pages of small octavo weigh half a hundredweight.

The practice of giving the author slip or galley proof is designed to mitigate such disturbances. If the author makes his additions and subtractions before the book is paged (and confines his alterations to that stage), the result is certainly much more expensive than if he had finished his book before he sent it to press; two bites have been made of his cherry, and all the elaboration of records and correspondence doubled; the new ‘matter’ has to be set up and put in its place, read by the readers and by the author, and two if not three stages of revision by all concerned are substituted for one. At least, however, the disintegrating consequences are avoided of the addition of fresh paragraphs to paged or ‘made-up’ proof. Many authors unfortunately, having grasped that slips can be added to or shuffled, infer that any kind of correction is venial on slips. But it should be obvious that if the area affected is the paragraph, slips are in no way different from pages. The cost of verbal corrections is the same.

Authors would doubtless treat a proof with more respect if they realized that type-setting is not a purely mechanical act. Words do not arrange themselves; about a quarter of the compositor’s time is spent in spacing his letters, after he has picked them up and placed them in order; and a well-set page, in which the spacing strikes the eye as uniform, is a work of art. To disturb it for a trifle is injurious as well as costly.

In a perfect world, perhaps the author would pay for his own corrections—those, that is, that are due to his own taste and not to the error of the printer. (It may be mentioned that printers are entitled to charge, and do charge, for pardonable misreading of an author’s illegible copy; and that the term ‘printer’s error’ is far too often applied by authors and the public to such misreadings, not detected in revision, and even to palpable mistakes which could not possibly be due to the compositor.) But it is impossible to determine when a compositor is justified in misreading copy; and for other reasons it is impracticable to make the author pay. Publishers therefore expect to pay something beyond the bare cost of composition; and to protect themselves against incompetence or wantonness they are accustomed to stipulate that a certain limit shall not be exceeded. Unfortunately this precaution, like that of slips, is often interpreted as an indulgence, and an author thinks that if he does not exceed his limit he is free to correct as he pleases. It is very desirable that his conscience should be educated. It should be a point of honour not to inflict upon printer and publisher the burden of irritating afterthoughts and infirm vacillations.

R. W. CHAPMAN

1920

¹ This article by Dr. R. W. Chapman, then Secretary to the Delegates of the Press at Oxford, was first published in the Athenæum, 16 July 1920, and was reprinted in Collins’s Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary in the fifth (1921) and subsequent editions. It refers to the basic principles of book-production which, even fifty years after it was written, still hold good in the main. [Text of original footnote; to return to your place in text, click here.]

² The principle holds good whether Monotype setting has been used, as envisaged by Chapman; Linotype or Intertype slug-composition; or filmsetting. [Text of original footnote; to return to your place in text, click here.]