A PERIODICAL highly esteemed in literary circles, in reviewing a book, said: “The proof-reading is so bad that we infer that its author could not have seen the proofs.” The publishers of the book do their own printing, and probably think their proof-reading is as good as possible, though they may realize that it is not as good as it should be. Many employers have had trying experiences in their efforts to secure good proof-readers, and such experience may have operated in favor of poor workmen, through sheer discouragement of their employers.

An inference that “its author could not have seen the proofs,” while possibly natural, is hasty; for, while many authors examine their proofs carefully, and are reasonably quick to perceive and correct errors, most authors are not good proof-readers.

Errors in print were quite as common as they now are when “following copy” was common, as it was in New York, for instance, about thirty years ago. One of the best offices in which a man could set type was Alvord’s, flourishing at the time mentioned. In it the compositor measured for his bill absolutely everything for which a customer paid, be it a cut, a blank page, or anything else. There, likewise, he was seldom called upon to change a letter or a point except to make it like his copy. Certain large offices in New York now are like Alvord’s only in the fact that their proof-reading is not good—and the authors see most of the proofs. In one important matter these offices are utterly unlike Alvord’s—no compositor can earn decent wages in them.

Employers are largely responsible for the common poorness of our proof-reading, because they have not recognized the real nature of the work, and have insisted upon classing it as mechanical. Proof-reading will never be what it should be until the proof-reader ranks with the editor both in importance and in pay. With no more pay than that of the good compositor, and sometimes with less than the first-class compositor’s pay, the proof-reader’s position will not be adequately filled. Properly qualified proof-readers seldom remain long at the reading-desk, because they can and will do better elsewhere.

Something should be done to keep the best readers as such, for they are all climbing up into other fields of labor where they find stronger inducements, both in credit and in pay. Even in the case of our large dictionaries and encyclopÆdias, almost every one of which is decidedly bettered by the work of some one special proof-reader, there is little acknowledgment of the fact, and so there is little encouragement for the proof-reader to remain a proof-reader.

No one is surely fit to be trusted with proof-reading on particular work without having learned by practical experience. The best proof-readers must have as a foundation a natural aptitude, and they should have at least a good common education; but even these are not sufficient without practical training. One of the poorest compositors on a New York morning paper was very helpful in the proof-room occasionally, while some of the best compositors were not so good at reading. It is undeniable that printers themselves make the best proof-readers when to their technical knowledge they add scholarship.

A first-class compositor is worthy of special favor, and generally gets it. A maker-up or a stone-hand who works well and quickly, or sometimes even one who does excellent work without great speed, is a treasure. Compositor, maker-up, and stone-hand, however, all do work that must be examined and corrected by the reader; and of course that reader is best who can also do any or all of the other work. What is said of the reader’s qualifications is not altogether theoretical; it is all in line with the practical needs of every good proof-room, and every employer wants a good proof-room.

The correction of the evil, which is certainly a desideratum, may be secured eventually in one way, and that way is the one necessary for authors as well as proof-readers. We need improved methods of general education. We need more general training and development of the thinking power. Seldom indeed do even our greatest thinkers reason sufficiently. No amount of argument could prove this assertion beyond question, but some examples will serve a good purpose as an object-lesson.

One of our most prominent philologists, a man of great learning, addressed a meeting of scholars, speaking strongly in favor of what he calls “reformed” spelling—which would be re-formed indeed, but is not yet proved to be entitled to the epithet “reformed.” Here is one of his assertions: “One-sixth of the letters on a common printed page are silent or misleading. Complete simplification would save one-sixth of the cost of books.” Of course, he must have meant the cost of printing. Even with one-sixth less work in printing, very nearly the old cost of binding would remain, if not all of it; and any sort of good binding is no small item in the cost of a book. But one-sixth of the space occupied by the print would seldom be saved by the omission of one-sixth of the letters. The magazine article containing the report of the address is printed with the proposed new spelling. There is not a line in it that shows omission of one-sixth of the letters now commonly used in its words. One line in a paragraph of seven lines has “batl” for “battle,” and if the two missing letters had been inserted the word “the” might have been driven over into the next line; but the total effect on the paragraph of all possible changes would have been nothing—the same number of lines would be necessary for it. Certainly the assertion that one-sixth would be saved was not sufficiently thoughtful.

A recent pretentious work on the English language and English grammar (by Samuel Ramsey) would afford an example of loose thinking from almost any of its 568 pages. A few only need be given here. As to Danish influence on early English speech, it is said that “the general effect ... was to shorten and simplify words that were long or of different utterance, and dropping or shortening grammatical forms.” It should have been easy for the author to perceive that this sentence was not well constructed; and what can be worse in a book on grammar than an ungrammatical sentence? We are told that a feature of English construction due to French influence is “the placing of the adjective after the noun, or giving it a plural form—sign manual, Knights Templars.” No English adjective ever has the plural form, and Templars is rightly pluralized simply because it is a noun. “No grammar will help us to distinguish the lumbar region from the lumber region,” Mr. Ramsey says. But grammar does help us by teaching us that lumbar is an adjective and lumber a noun. In careful speech accent would indicate the difference, which should be indicated in writing by joining the elements of the second term as a compound—lumber-region. In a chapter of “Suggestions to Young Writers,” the advice is given, “Let all your words be English, sound reliable English, and nothing but English; and when you speak of a spade call it by its name, and when you mean hyperÆsthesia, say so.” If a young writer “says so” by using the word instanced, will he use “nothing but English”?

Lord Tennyson is reported to have said: “I do not understand English grammar. Take sea-change. Is sea here a substantive used adjectively, or what? What is the logic of a phrase like Catholic Disabilities Annulling Bill? Does invalid chair maker mean that the chair-maker is a sickly fellow?” But Tennyson showed plainly in his writing, by making compounds of such terms as sea-change, that he felt, at least, that sea is not used adjectively, as “adjectively” is commonly understood. He must have thought that the phrase whose logic he asked for is wholly illogical and bad English, for he never wrote one like it. His own writing would never have contained the three separate words “invalid chair maker”; he would have made it “invalid chair-maker” (or chairmaker) for the sense he mentions, and “invalid-chair maker” if he meant “a maker of chairs for invalids.” Tennyson certainly used English words well enough to justify the assumption that he knew English grammar passing well.

George P. Marsh, in a lecture on the English language, said that “redness is the name of a color,” and John Stuart Mill made a similar assertion about whiteness in his book on “Logic.” Very little thought is necessary for the decision that neither redness nor whiteness is the name of a color, though each of the words includes such a name.

It is not fashionable nowadays to conclude with a moral, but this occasion is especially enticing, and here is the moral: Every proof-reader who cares for real success in his profession should cultivate the thinking habit, and learn not to jump to a conclusion.