The thirty-eighth edition of Hart’s Rules was published in 1978, price £2.50, and 184 pages long. Like the thirty-seventh edition, this edition had a dust jacket (click to see pop-up image, 100k), and an Oxford shield stamped in blind on the front cover. This volume was published and printed in Oxford, the London branch having been amalgamated into the Oxford site in 1971. Hart’s 1914 preface was preceded by a preface from Vivian Ridler (Printer 1958–78).

The edition took account of several contemporary standardizations, among them the Metrication Board and BS 5261, as well as expanded guidance on languages and in the index (a chronic shortcoming). In adition, information on current guidelines for composition and make-up were added as an appendix.

• Front cover (click to see pop-up image, 60k)
• Full-title (click to see pop-up image, 35k); note the new device at the bottom of the page, used to celebrate the Press’s quincentenary.
• Preface (click to see pop-up image, 77k)

PREFACE TO THE
THIRTY-EIGHTH EDITION

THIS new edition has been prompted largely if not entirely by the activities of such bodies as the British Standards Institution and the Metrication Board.

The general arrangement has been retained but the contents have again been completely revised, and where necessary expanded. Users should note some significant changes: almost all capital abbreviations and the more common contractions lose their points, and the section on proof correction has been rewritten to accord with British National Standard 5261. The former small section on Names of Genus and Species has been expanded into something more comprehensive, and now appears under the heading Biological Nomenclature. In the Foreign Languages section some guidance on the setting of Catalan, Portuguese, and Turkish has been added.

An important addition is included as an appendix: Rules for Composition and Make-up, one of several guides issued to craftsmen at the Press. Some of these rules are also to be found in the main text. A fuller index is provided, which should allow users to find their way more easily.

The revision is again the work of several hands, but particular mention must be made of the staff of the Oxford Dictionaries, whose contribution has been invaluable.

V.R.

PREFACE
(1914)

It is quite clearly set out on the title-page in all editions of these Rules and Examples, that they were intended especially for Compositors and Readers at the Clarendon Press. Consequently it seems necessary to explain why an edition or impression is now offered to so much of the General Public as is interested in the technicalities of Typography, or wishes to be guided to a choice amidst alternative spellings.

On the production of the First Edition at the Oxford Press, copies were placed in the hands of all Readers, Compositors, and Compositor-apprentices; and other copies found their way into the hands of Authors and Editors of books then in the printers’ hands. Subsequently, friends of authors, and readers and compositors in other printing offices, began to ask for copies, which were always supplied without charge. By and by applications for copies were received from persons who had no absolute claim to be supplied gratuitously; but as many of such requests came from Officials of King’s Government at Home, in the Colonies, and in India, it was thought advisable, on the whole, to continue the practice of presentation.

Recently, however, it became know that copies of the booklet were on sale in London. A correspondent wrote that he had just bought a copy ‘at the Stores’; and as it seems more than complaisant to provide gratuitously what may afterwards be sold for profit, the writer has no alternative but to publish this little book.

As to the origin and progress of the work, it was begun in 1864, when the compiler was a member of the London Association of Correctors of the Press. With the assistance of a small band of fellow members employed in the same printing-office as himself, a first list of examples was drawn up, to furnish a working basis.

Fate so ordained that, in course of years, the writer became in succession general manager of three London printing-houses. In each of these institutions additions were made to his selected list of words, which, in this way, gradually expanded – embodying what compositors term ‘the Rule of the House’.

In 1883, as Controller of the Oxford Press, the writer began afresh the work of adaptation; but pressure of other duties deferred its completion nearly ten years, for the first edition is dated 1893. Even at that date the book lacked the seal of final approval, being only part of a system of printing-office management.

Ultimately, Dr. J. A. H. Murray and Mr. Henry Bradley, editors of the New English Dictionary, were kind enough to revise and approve all the English spellings. Bearing the stamp of their sanction, the booklet has an authority which it could not otherwise have claimed.

To the later issues Professor Robinson Ellis and Mr. H. Stuart Jones have contributed two appendices, containing instructions for the Division of Words in printing Latin and Greek. A third appendix has been added, on the authority of Sir J. A. H. Murray, showing how to print some Proper Names in the Possessive Case.

H.H.

 

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