The twenty-third edition of Hart’s Rules was published in January 1914 by by Humphrey Milford, Frowde’s successor in OUP’s London office, and printed by Horace Hart, price sixpence. Two prefaces appear: the first, written by Hart originally in 1904 and updated in 1914 with slight modifications and three new paragraphs, dates from the fourteenth edition. This expaned edition was to become a feature of subsequent editions.

• Front and back cover (click to see pop-up image, 45k)
• Full-title (click to see pop-up image, 30k)
• Pages 2 and 3 (preface, click here for text), 4 and 5 (preface cont’d), 6 and 7 (contents), 88 and 89
  
  

Only minor changes took place in this edition, generally small additions to, or rearrangement of, some of the entries

While many editions—at least from the nineteenth edition till this one— employed ornaments (leaves, books, swirls, and the like) as spacers between sections, this edition is unique in boasting what was in 1914 a very high-tech symbol: an electric lightbulb. It is not known why this particular device was chosen in 1914: electricity was not installed in the Clarendon Press Institute till 1919, and not in the Press proper till 1926.

A review of the previous edition, from the Newpaper Owner periodical, was titled ‘A Book to be Bought at Once’, recommended that the book ‘should be regarded as absolutely indispensable in every newspaper and printing office throughout the kingdom.’

To subsequent editions the late Professor ROBINSON ELLIS and Mr. H. STUART JONES contributed two appendices, containing instructions for the Division of Words in Latin and Greek; and the section on the German Language was revised by Dr. KARL BREUL, Reader in Germanic in the University of Cambridge.

Recent issues of this work comprise many additions and some rearrangement. The compiler has encouraged the proof-readers of the University Press from time to time to keep memoranda of troublesome words in frequent—or indeed in occasional—use, not recorded in previous issues of the ‘Rules’, and to make notes of the mode of printing them which is decided on. As each edition of the book becomes exhausted such words are reconsidered, and in their approved form are incorporated into the pages of the forthcoming edition. The same remark applies to new words which appear unexpectedly, like new planets, and take their place in what Sir JAMES MURRAY calls the ‘World of Words’. Such instances as (page 5) airman, airship, sabotage, sea-plane, stepney-wheel, syndication, will occur to every newspaper reader.

Lastly, it ought to be added that in one or two cases, a particular way of spelling a word or punctuating a sentence has been completely changed. This does not often mean than an error has been discovered in the ‘Rules’; but rather that the fashion has altered, and that it is necessary to guide the compositor accordingly.

H.H.

January, 1914.

 

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