The Magazine Style-Code :: SOURCES OF AUTHORITY.

SOURCES OF AUTHORITY.

1. It is to be regretted that every publishing-house does not start on the principle that a thorough system of doing things right should precede the turning out of printed matter; but the press of business is so great, the demands for ‘rush work’ are so many, that system comes last, if at all. Managers are busy with the cash account and the pay-roll, for which reason a great deal is left to chance.

Thus it falls that the negligence, incompetence, or preoccupation of printing-office managers makes good systems of typography the exception rather than the rule. It is a reflection on the art preservative that the slipshod methods and unscholarly composition of the daily newspaper type often corrupt the pages of trade-and class-publications, as well as of magazines and books. See paragraph 45 of this book for an explanation of the use of hyphens in the foregoing sentence. See paragraph 68 for the use of single quote-marks herein.

The hurried work of newspapermen may be partly excused on the ground of haste, yet in another sense it requires no more time to do a thing the right way than to do it the wrong way.

Printing-houses that pretend to turn out careful work, such as publishing books and periodicals, should follow some model of unquestioned authority; but as proper exemplars are not often at hand, the daily newspaper, being omnipresent, is taken for a pattern.

The purpose of this handbook is to furnish a guide based on the scholarship and technical knowledge of some of the world’s greatest authors and printers. As blunders and inconsistencies creep into print everywhere, even when special care is taken to avoid them, the author expects this very work to be an example of the mistakes it warns others to avoid. Such shortcomings as here appear, however, should serve to emphasize the need of great pains by all who write and print.

Some years ago it fell to the author to harmonize the style-codes of three printing-houses that were doing work for him. In seeking a model of accuracy and typographical neatness the system expounded by Theodore Low De Vinne, used by the Century Magazine and the Century Company, was chosen.

It was discovered that there never has been any formal style-code in use by the De Vinne-Century printers. They have learned the style by studying De Vinne’s Correct Composition and like works of his on typography. Office experience teaches printers the written and unwritten laws of the De Vinne code.

The method of the Century printers has been largely the method of the author of this manual. By correspondence with Mr. De Vinne, by studying his books, and by the practical application of his rules to the work of many offices the writer has come to know his methods, which are believed to be the simplest and most scholarly in use in the United States to-day. More than eighty per cent of the rules herein expounded are codified from the works of De Vinne, or gleaned from Teall and similar sources of indisputable authority. The work of the Chicago Proofreaders’ Association has been found helpful in the compounding of words.

System is as necessary in a printing-house as in a bank, and classification and obedience to the law of the office are absolutely essential to the production of correct composition. Since many editors and patrons, authors and others are usually either careless or untrained in the art of preparing copy, the printer must be extremely painstaking and methodic, or his work will be censured, and he will be blamed for every fault that shows itself in ‘cold type.’ The owners of newspapers printed at other men’s offices are especially unreasonable when mistakes occur. No matter how careless such customers are with their work, they expect the printer to be infallible. Every publisher of wide experience will corroborate this statement. The skilful writer expects reasonable accuracy, the ignoramus wants printers to be Macaulays and mind-readers as well.

2. Why Style-codes are Necessary. Style-codes are necessary because much of the copy that is presented to printers is neither written nor edited with reference to accuracy, consistency, or the rules of orderly typography. Indeed much copy is not edited at all; it reaches the case or the machine with its original crudities thick upon it, and if blunders are discovered by the public the slovenly authors defend themselves by charging them to ‘errors of the types,’ or blunders of the printers. On account of the general carelessness of writers, style-codes are necessary; they enable printers and proofreaders to hold writers within reasonable bounds. If all things were written just as they should be printed, style-codes would be useless.

3. Edited Manuscripts Save Money. Just as short words and short, simple sentences save the time and energy required to gather the meaning that would be clouded by the use of long, involved sentences, so clearly written and accurately prepared manuscripts save time, energy, and money in the printing-office.

Typewritten copy is almost a necessity in this busy age, but whether penned or typed, manuscripts should be consistent in style, and above all readily legible. Fast typesetting machines should not be made slow and expensive by the carelessness and indistinct manuscripts of editors and other writers for the press.

4. Uniformity is Essential to Success. Uniformity in the method of using capital letters, compound words, punctuation marks, etc., is essential where any care is taken with printed matter. It is astonishing that many editors, reporters, ministers, lawyers, and others who write for publication are not only ignorant of typographical niceties, but of fundamentals as well. Going further, it may be said that many printing-houses are conducted in a haphazard way, as if uniformity and accuracy were luxuries beyond price. Even under the best system, contradictions and other errors are certain to abound. The best that can be expected is to reduce blunders to the minimum.

5. Passing the Blame to Printers. Many writers pass the responsibility and the blame to printers. This is a slovenly and unreasonable course. Printers do not agree, some are incompetent, all are busy with other details than editing copy, and it is not the duty of printers to correct the blunders of writers. Again, a printer may see but a fraction of a given manuscript, and may not know, unless there is an office style-card, what system is the author’s desire. A style-card will show printers the way out of many dark places, and will overcome many of the obstacles presented by the copy of untrained editors and writers. In well-arranged offices, however, the compositor’s right to make changes is a limited one.

It is the duty of typographers to follow copy unless there is a clear inadvertence, such as going too town instead of to town, for example. Writers should understand that printers, though often highly competent to write or edit manuscripts better than those who present them as copy, are too busy at the case or the machine to stop and edit copy, form a style-code, consult dictionaries, verify quotations, harmonize discrepancies, and prevent the blunders of writers in general. If nobody edits copy, one of two things happens—the blunders are put into type for the public eye, or they are corrected by the proofreader. The former course destroys the printer’s reputation, the latter adds to the cost of work.

6. Making Copy is an Art. The world’s universities do not teach how to prepare copy for printers. Often college men are not only poor writers of English, but they are as careless of the niceties of typography as are printers in most houses, editors of some publications, ministers, school-teachers, reporters, and public officers. In most manuscripts inconsistencies abound. Numbers, for example, should be spelled out, or written in arabic or in roman numerals, yet the three methods are sometimes seen on one page of copy.

7. Uniform Methods Throughout. Abbreviations, the use of italic, of smaller bodies of types, of varying measures, of bold-face, light-faced antique, and like typographical methods for indicating headings, cut-in notes, emphatic words, etc., should be under some definite and sensible plan.

8. Points for Writers. Paper for linotype operators as well as that for hand-compositors should be about the size of commercial note, and the writing should run the long way of the page, the reason being that sheets of the commercial note size fit into the machine ‘copy-holder’ very neatly. Good margins should be left at the top and sides, this for side-notes and catch-lines for headings. Names of persons, etc., should be ‘printed out’ carefully in manuscripts, and interlineations should be avoided. Blind hands have always caused infinite trouble in printing-houses. (Consult ‘blind’ in the Standard Dictionary.)

9. Style-codes Should be Mastered. Those in authority in publishing-houses and elsewhere should compel reporters, editors, printers, proofreaders, and others whose duty it is to know style to master the office code. In many instances the carelessness of writers adds to the cost of production in every other department of publishing. Strangely, however, many writers assume offhand that anybody can capitalize words correctly and uniformly. Such writers jump to conclusions in the most reckless way imaginable. Their methods and definitions are no more correct than were the definitions given by a band of amateur scientists who described a crab in answer to the great Cuvier’s question. They said a crab was a small, red fish that walks backward. “A perfect definition,” said Cuvier, “except that the crab is not a fish, is not red, and does not walk backward.”

10. Office Dictionary Should Govern. One dictionary should be selected as the sovereign guide in every printing-house. If some things in the chosen dictionary seem wrong there should be a list or card of variations from authority. For many reasons the author of this little book prefers the Standard Dictionary to all others. It seems to have, among other things, the most consistent and thorough method of compounding words. Its spellings are the simplest, its pronunciations the most rational. The incomparable work of F. Horace Teall shines in the department that deals with the important subject of compounding English words. Teall’s English Compound Words and Phrases should be before every editor. As elsewhere explained, his system is a little behind the times, owing to a recent movement to solidify words. See paragraph 41.

11. What Printers Should Edit. There is a class of matter which printers should edit as they proceed in their work, and this they should do without delay or risk of exceeding authority. Reprint should be made to conform to the office style. Often editors have ample time to read clippings with sufficient care for acceptance, but without time or means to make such excerpts conform to the governing code. Owing to lack of marginal space and space between printed lines, there is no room for certain emendations, the changing of compounds, and the rearrangement of capitals. For these reasons most reprint reaches the printer as it originally appeared in the ‘exchange’ from which it was clipped.

Even if an editor should take pains to change the style of reprint the result would be an unsatisfactory net-work of interlineations, carets, transpositions, rings, and other marks—in short, it would be bad copy. Some editors make it a rule to quote the general style of the clipping, holding that the style of the clipping is as much a part of the author’s personality as are his words and sentences. Unfortunately there are usually so many contradictions and inaccuracies, so many evidences of no style whatever, that it is not a sensible plan to follow reprint copy. The best system is for the compositor to follow the code of his office, and the code should be so well known to him that to follow it would be a pleasure.

In many small offices, where copy-readers or copy-editors are not employed, a knowledge of the style-code by printers and proofreaders is of vital importance. It has been computed by a committee of printers of wide experience that a style-code will save from three to five per cent of the cost of composition. In offices conducted along the lines of chaos the waste of time is great.

12. Authors are the Supreme Authority. There is no doubt that every author has the right to dictate what shall be the typographical form of his work, but no self-respecting publisher’s imprint or hall-mark ever appears on the pages of slovenly work. Even the author who demands his own way should be shown his inconsistencies and slacknesses, if they exist. The productions of some authors, who insist that copy be followed by the printer, betray lack of system before the work has reached the end of a galley; but if a writer urges that his faults be put in type his orders should be followed. Instructions are often obeyed, greatly to the amusement of everybody in the office, including the battery boy and the devil.

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