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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 7
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
The man who chalks on his window an inscription which reads
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from the street has been matched by the master of an English fishing-smack, who, after pitching his boat, determined also to paint the name on the stern. To save trouble, he operated from the deck. Then he went ashore to admire his handiwork from a distance, and read:
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A contributor to the Christchurch Press comments on the un-colonial style of certain boys, who, finding a snake in the Temuka domain, straightway killed it. The proper course would have been to write to the agricultural society or to the minister of agriculture in Wellington, requesting that an official should be sent down to investigate and report. Unless these boys acquire wisdom with increasing years, they will develop a dangerous and unpatriotic spirit of individualism and self-reliance.
The American Bookmaker says: Not many years ago union printers were strongly opposed to the employment of women as compositors. After a time they not only recognized them, but admitted them to membership in their organization, and now are moving for equal pay for both sexes. We believe in the fitness of women for this work, and also in paying them the same rate as men, provided that they are giving the same amount of services. There are large numbers of women compositors in most of the large cities, and the Century Dictionary is sufficient evidence of their ability, a great part of the composition on that work having been done by women.
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The English House of Commons has made a grotesque exhibition of weakness in its recent breach of privilege proceedings against The Times. A parliament professing advanced liberalism has gone back just 130 years, and furbished up the old Tory engine which was used to silence John Wilkes.
It is a common error to value assets at what they cost instead of what they would realize. The difference is sometimes enormous. The great chandelier at her Majesty's Theatre, London, probably the largest in England, cost over £2,500. It was recently sold for the sum of £9.
The abbreviation of business words goes on apace in the States. To obviate the confusion between the two meanings of « typewriter, » and simplify matters generally, the four words « typer, » « typist, » « typing, » and « typed » are suggested. A writer in Fame recommends that the common contraction « ad » for advertisement, should be used for the verb advertise, and « adment » substituted, also « ader » for advertiser, and « ading » for advertising. This suggestion is not a good one, as it would confuse the verbs « advertise » and « add, » with all their derivatives. Clippings of words thus used debase the currency, and are more suggestive of laziness than economy.
We have already noted the gradual disappearance of woodcuts from the pages of English illustrated periodicals. All lovers of good work in black and white will regret to know that Punch has joined in the retrograde movement, and that, following the example of the inferior comics, he has substituted cheap and common etched zinc for artistic work in wood. The first example was a drawing by Sambourne in the issue of 17th December; now, all the blocks, Tenniel's cartoon included, are so produced. The gray and rotten zinc line contrasts very unfavorably with the rich and bold lines of the engraved boxwood. Having dropped his only external mark of distinction from the rest of the humorous press, Punch will require all the literary skill he can command to maintain his premier position.
Welchmen, apparently, are quite able to joke about the peculiarities of their beloved mother-tongue. The Effective Advertiser quotes the following from a printed handbill: « The March of the 2nd Batt. 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers through North Wales, detraining at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llandysiliogogogoch. Take notice. Every soldier belonging to the above battalion will, upon presentation at the National Schools, Menai Bridge, and giving a correct pronunciation of the station of their detraining, as set forth above, be granted free admission to the Grand Bazaar… Admission 6d. » We would prefer to pay the sixpence. The above word is instructive, as showing how English may yet be printed, if the example of our American friends who write « proofreader » and « workingman » be followed, and carried to its legitimate conclusion.
The Mildura irrigation settlement is quoted by some of our Australian contemporaries as an example of the failure of prohibition. As, however, they are good enough to publish the facts, their readers can, if they please, draw a different conclusion. It having been reported to the authorities that an illegal traffic in liquor was carried on secretly, a detective was sent up. It took three months' patient work to discover the « open sale » of liquor which had been the boast of the metropolitan press. Then suddenly the twenty-two dens were raided. Two dealers fled, and warrants were issued for their arrest. Fines and imprisonment were inflicted in all twenty cases. The lowest fine was £30 and costs; and the terms of imprisonment (with hard labor) were up to twelve months. The shebeen-keepers are in jail, and their liquors seized; yet prohibition in Mildura is a failure!
The brilliant reputation of the late Sir Richard Owen needs no fiction to enhance its lustre. The obituary notices, however, nearly all repeat a myth which has been current in various forms for more than forty years. We find it asserted that he discovered the leg-bone of the moa to be that of a bird, and « from one fossil bone built up the whole structure of the monster biped with almost perfect accuracy. » It is true that the Professor began his researches with a single bone, but he was explicitly told that it was a bird's bone, and had to verify, not discover, the fact. In his first memoir, which has never been reprinted, he suggested that the bird was allied to the dodo—placing it in a wrong natural order. Naturalists appreciate his insight and courage in insisting that the bone was avine, when his contemporaries accused him of madness, and said it belonged to an ox. This is not picturesque enough, however, for the ordinary newspaper writer, and the circle to whom he appeals. The result is a caricature. In the place of the eminent student of nature, we have an infallible genius, superior to ordinary methods—a kind of scientific « Sherlock Holmes. »
Press censorship in Turkey (says a contemporary) forbids the use of such expressions as « to be continued in our next.» Serial stories are strictly prohibited.
Nothing strikes the observant visitor to the colonies more forcibly than the contrast between the « Liberal » of the old world and the new. It would be difficult to find a point of resemblance. In New Zealand the Liberal is the hope of the liquor rings and the advocate of prohibitive tariffs; and the champions of liquor law reform, freedom of the press, free trade, and female franchise, are the « Tories. »
The name of the village in North Wales, quoted in another paragraph, it will be noted, exactly fits the line. This is one of those coincidences in type-setting which are part of the experience of every compositor; though to state the mathematical chances against the occurrence of such an instance as the present would probably require nearly as many figures as there are letters in the line. In this case there was no « coaxing, » the manuscript copy having been followed verbatim et literatim.
It is the custom of our home contemporaries, in reducing American type computations to English standard, to double the ems. This is not correct, and gives an exaggerated result. The English em is the square of the body, and the en the half-square; but the American em is the actual width of the regular m of the font, whatever it may be. This rarely, if ever, equals the measurement of the body, and in condensed fonts is considerably less. Two standards, one variable and the other invariable, are necessarily incommensurable. To represent one accurately in terms of the other would require a special measurement in each case.
Horace Greeley, though the most celebrated of illegible writers, was not the worst. Dean Stanley appears to have excelled him. Canon Kingsley one day received a letter from the dean at a time when Mrs Kingsley was very ill. The letter arrived at dinner time, by the evening post. Mr Kingsley opened it, and examined it for many minutes. At last he said, « I have every reason to believe that this is a very kind letter of sympathy from Stanley. I feel sure it is. Yet the only two words I can even guess at are 'heartless devil.' But I pause—I pause to accept that suggestion, as a scarcely likely one under the circumstances. »
Mr E. Tucker, Stratford, writes:—Reading the accounts of the funeral of the late poet laureate recalled to mind the concluding couplet of Hayley's « Elegy on the Antient Greek Model »:
And give thee, gazing on the Throne of Grace,
To view thy mighty Maker face to face.
A critic on this poem writes: « This bold expression of exalted piety was borrowed from St. Paul by the great Condé: the sublime and enviable circumstances of whose death are thus described by the eloquent Bossuet:—« Oui, dit-il, nous verrons Dieu comme il est, face à face; il repetoit en Latin, avec une gout merveilleux, ces grands mots —sicuti est: facie ad faciem.' »
The fact that a newspaper has a wide circle of readers does not relieve it from the necessity of keeping one on its regular staff. A North Island paper is apparently endeavoring to dispense with this useful functionary; and in small compass we find references to Fad-staff, barroness of resource, a people who have displaced helpfulness and deserved well of the powers that be, oprobrium, ammount, Mr Furgus, the hon. member for Cluthur, hon. geneleman, manifactured, feldspur, ballance-sheet, suffered great prevations, implicibly trust, interrogetory, steriotyped, rediculous, imperitive, herisy, axium, leven, analyst and interpredation of a bill—and much more in the same style. The editor modestly « reckons » that he has « a tolerably fair idea of the resources of our language. » He is evidently capable of widening those resources very considerably.
The pronunciation of proper names seems to be the most arbitrary of the many arbitrary matters in the English language. Not long ago Mrs Besant made it known that her name should be pronounced to rime with « pleasant. » Probably folks have been addressing Mr Walter Besant by the same rule, for he has lately plainly stated that his name is « Be-sánt. » Personal caprice has much to do with spelling and pronunciation. Hence such erratic forms as « Feild, » « Sheild, » &c., and the host of Lockes, Brownes, and Smithes, whose fathers knew nothing of the final e. Angus B. Reach, the author, affected an eccentric pronunciation of his name. The story is often told of Thackeray's repartee, when his fellow author publicly corrected him with « Ré-ak, if you please. » Handing him a dish of fruit Thackeray said politely, « Mr Ré-ak, ؟will you take a pe-ak? » The joke was innocent enough, but it gave grave offence.