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Some Common Errors.

Imitation is the most fruitful source of the common errors in spelling. In our own early apprentice days, if we saw a word spelt or accented in an uncouth fashion, we thought there must be some reason for it, and took the earliest opportunity of copying our model. The proper and only safe course, in such a case, is to refer to competent authority. Much of the current mis-spelling is due to mere blundering; a large proportion to erroneous ideas of etymology.

« Idyl » is nearly always spelt « idyll. » It is said that the error was made by an amanuensis in transcribing Tennyson's great poem for the press. Once having appeared in a standard work, it has become the fashionable spelling.

« Ribbon » is sometimes spelt « riband » and « ribband. » This error is now very rare, thanks chiefly to Messrs. Stephenson, Blake, & Co., who have, with their Ribbon combination, disseminated the correct spelling throughout the world. The word is not derived from « band, » but from the Latin rubens (red), through the French ruban and old English riban.

« Rib-band, » on the other hand, a nautical term—« a long narrow piece of timber bent and nailed on the outside of the ribs, so as to encompass the vessel lengthwise »—is often wrongly spelt « riband » and « ribbon. »

« Lantern » in old books—and too often in new—is spelt « lanthorn. » The word, which comes to us through the French from the Latin, has no connexion with « horn, » and only absolute ignorance of etymology could ever have led to the erroneous spelling. « Th » being really one letter in English, the ugly word is divided by the eye into lan-thorn.

« Pannikin » should never be spelt « pannican. » It has no connexion with « can, » but is merely « pan » with a diminutive affixed. « Canikin »—the more appropriate word—appears to be obsolete.

« Bran new » is often erroneously spelt « brand. » Bra is an old word signifying line, and still survives in the Scandinavian and Scottish dialects. In English it is now only used in association with « new, » and has taken the « n » for euphony. We shall some day, perhaps, have a revised version of Huntingtower: « I'll bring ye a brand new gown, lassie. » The perversion is now pretty deeply rooted, and Typo may have a dictionary or two thrown at his head. But it is not the province of lexicons to make language, though by their errors they sometimes help to mar it. One authority makes the fanciful and far-fetched suggestion: « Bright as a burning brand »! In reality, the common usage suggests a box or cask just packed, with the manufacturers' « brand » obtrusively legible, or a ready-made suit still adorned with the sale-ticket. Someone may quote the Tatler. But the writers of the last century were not etymologists, and in matters of orthography, each man did what was right in his own eyes. We could find authorities for « gownd. »

« Chock-full, » a nautical expression, is frequently printed « choke. » A chock is a wedge or block, as for example a stone under a wheel. In the verbal form, it signifies to fix with a block, as « to chock a cask. » It may be correctly used in the intransitive, as « The woodwork exactly chocked into the joints. » In the correct phrase, there is nothing inelegant—the term forcibly expresses that all interstices have been filled. The incorrect spelling conveys a coarse idea of gorging with food to the point of suffocation.

« Bitter-end » is commonly written as two words, and quoted as if it involved the idea of bitterness. To « fight to the bitter-end » is a nautical expression which loses all its force when the technical term is misunderstood. To make this clear, some definitions may be required. « Bitts (Dan. bitte, Fr. bitte, from the same root as bite)—a frame of two strong pieces of timber fixed perpendicularly in the fore-part of a ship, in which to fasten the cables. Bittee, a turn of the cable around the bitts. Bitter-end, that part of the cable abaft the bitts, and therefore within-board, when the ship rides at anchor. » The idea of the term is to fight to the extreme end of the bows, as far as there is standing-room. The phrase thus applied is striking and forcible—as commonly used, it is simply meaningless.

« Home » is the term commonly applied by colonists to the mother country. When used in this sense, in some of the colonial papers, the word is distinguished by a capital letter. This is not only indefensible on grammatical grounds, but offensive to the eye. As in « heaven » and « hell, » the capital letter is wrong. And the undiscriminating comp. is beginning to « keep up » the word in all cases. So we read in a police report: « The prisoner's wife was trying to take him Home when the assault was committed. »

Another source of bad spelling is the idea of distinguishing various meanings of the same word. « Curb, » as in « curb-stone; » « story, » of a building; and « tire, » of a wheel, should not be spelt « kerb, » « storey, » and « tyre. »

« Bay rum » is a nostrum, the name of which is often mangled. It may be seen spelt « Bay rhum » and « Bey rhum. » This is simply bad spelling. In technical words, especially in printing, we find a similar affectation.

« Faint ruled » is very commonly spelt « feint. » The word is the ordinary « faint, » and in no way connected with « feint, » a pretence.

« Form » is spelt « forme »—even in technical books of good repute. It is pure affectation. Why not « sticke, » « bulke, » and « racke? »

« Pie » a good old word, is tortured by Yankee printers into « pi » and « pye. » To the first of these forms the language affords no parallel; the latter is obsolete.

« Serif » is spelt in many ways. We have seen « seriff, » « surryph, » and « ceriph. » The word comes from the Hebrew, and there is no fixed system of transliteration. In such a case, the simplest spelling is the best.

« Shoot-board » we find turned into the foreign-looking « schuteboard, » in an American trade-paper. A printer who spells like that deserves to be schott with his own schuting-stick.

« Aërated » is often spelt « Ærated. » This is enough to set one's teeth on edge. So far from the diphthong being correct, the vowels represent two distinct syllables, and are properly marked by the diæresis, on sign of separation. Some artist will yet give us « Michæl » and « Isræl. »

The sign « lb » is often incorrectly printed « lbs. » The plural of libra is libræ, and the « s » should never be used. No one writes « £s 20 » or « 51s. » « Rs » is sometimes printed for « rupees. » Here again the « s » is superfluous.

« Whiting, » in accordance with vulgar usage, is often printed « whitening. » But we do not remember to have ever seen the parallel word « blacking » similarly maltreated.

The « Sting-ray » is a fish of the ray tribe, whose flexible tail is armed with one or more ivory barbs or « stings. » No Greek or Latin name could better describe him than the vernacular. Vulgar little boys have corrupted his name to « stingaree »—and newspapers are beginning to do the same.

The « Snapper » (Pagrus unicolor) is a voracious fish whose character is well described in his name. Some ill-informed person started spelling the word « schnapper, » and the meaningless word is almost taking the place of the English name. This is a particularly egregious blunder, as the fish, being a water-drinker, has nothing to do with (« Schnapps. »

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« Tea-tree » is generally mis-spelt « ti-tree, » under the erroneous impression that it is a Maori name. Some time ago a wager was settled by a Thames paper in favor of « ti. » But the editor was mistaken. An infusion of the leaves of the manuka (leptospermum), which is found in Australia as well as New Zealand, was used by the early colonists as a beverage, and the plant has ever since been known as « tea-tree. » The plant called ti by the natives (Cordyline australis) is totally different, and is never called « tea-tree. » The publications of the Government printing office are generally models of correct printing, but this latter error is sometimes allowed to creep into them.

In Mackellar's Typographic Advertiser some time ago, objection was taken to the newspaper word « lengthy. » We quite agree that it should be avoided. It means neither more or less than « long »—it neither qualifies nor enforces the idea of length; and it clumsily sets forth in two syllables and seven letters what is more clearly expressed in one syllable of four letters. Familiarity has dulled our perception of its ugliness, but if the word is admissible, by all rules of analogy we would be equally justified in writing « strengthy. »

An English paper just to hand, objects to the advertisement of a Drury-Lane pantomime under the title of The 40 Thieves, on the ground that it imports the symbols of an exact science into the region of imagination. « The Forty Thieves » is of course correct. It would be well for young beginners to remember that whenever a certain or round number is given to express an uncertain amount, the use of figures is excluded. « A thousand difficulties lay in the way, » « Four or five times he tried, » « A man of about forty-five years of age, » are eases in point. The rule is also (except in mathematical and statistical work) to represent small numbers in words. « At half-past four, » « Seventy-five lives were lost, » &c. To show the absurdity of the use of precise signs of number in imaginative work, English writer gives some new readings in verse:

Of the 300 spare but 3,
To make a new Thermopylæ.

1000 spurs are striking deep,
1000 spears in rest,
1000 knights are pricking close, &c.

— But these examples are outdone by that of the American reporter, who wrote: « The proceedings were brought to a close by the beautiful hymn

10,000,000 are their tongues,
But all their joys are l. »

The exigencies of the telegraph have led to the coining of very objectionable words, some of which appear to have come to stay. « Cablegram » is an instance. « To burgle » and « to suicide » may yet take their place in the dictionaries. The national tendency to clip words, to which we owe « cab, » « bus, » and « tram, » has a good deal to answer for. « Perambulator » is an inconveniently long word, and so « pram » is finding its way into print.

And here we must protest against attempts to perpetuate eccentricities of spelling in the names of places. We have in New Zealand a small town, the name of which is (officially) spelt « Feilding » after a gentleman whose whim it was to write his own name that way. The press, by refusing to adopt the perverted spelling, would only be using its influence in a right direction. English orthography is complex enough, in all conscience, without being further deranged by local and individual usage.

In the sporting columns of a newspaper we naturally look for slang. It is well known that the English language, when regard is had to grammatical restrictions, is altogether inadequate to the reporting of a race-meeting or football-match, to say nothing of a prize-fight. But we regret to see slang (mostly of American origin) creeping into departments where the ordinary rules of literature might be expected to hold good. A wonderful flower in Mexico, which takes in succession all the colors of the rainbow, « is further credited with perfume only in the middle of the day. » We do not credit the item at all; to credit the flower is nonsense. The cost of a new building is said to be « in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars. » If newspaper writers adequately realized their responsibilities as conservators of the noblest language the world has ever known, abominations like these would be rigorously excluded. And it is a notable fact, that in every instance above given where a metaphor is involved, the tendency of the error is to degrade the thought and debase the language.

Printing without types is now an accomplished fact. A syndicate of seven American newspapers, including the New York Tribune and the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette have bought a share in the Mergenthaler patent. A type-composing machine is so modified that instead of the pressure of the key releasing a type, it brings a female die into line. When the line is completed, it is moved out of the way and dipped into a bath of stereo-metal, a cast being made of the single line. The metal and die are chilled in eight seconds, when the dies are again available for use. This or a similar process was announced about a year ago, when it was to revolutionize printing. With some difficulty the Printer and Stationer obtained a specimen of the work, which was published in fac-simile. The type was pica size, the lines a nonpareil apart, and the general effect was horrible—worse than type-writer work. The process must have been much improved since to be at all practicable for newspaper printing; but it is a decidedly retrograde step. Correcting is scarcely possible in such a process; and good printing is out of the question. The exigencies of modern newspaper production have not been conducive to good printing. The rapid stereotyping, and the curving of the moulds, deteriorate the work; and so imperfect are the plates, that it has been found necessary to abandon the ordinary figures for skeleton signs like those in a post-office stamp, in order that they may be legible. But this new process is worse than any yet devised. The practical compositor will wonder how the lines are spaced. « Justification, » we are told, « is made by having the letter-moulds elastic, or in other words, a trifle bent. When clamped together tightly the line is thinspaced, and when not under pressure it is wide-spaced. This of course gives the same effect on the mould as if the type were off its feet, and it presents this appearance. An irregularity runs throughout the entire impression. » So we should think. We regret that a great paper like the Tribune should set to work to ruin its readers' eyesight by so hideous an invention. The company reckon that every printing office in the States will find it necessary to hire a machine, which will bring in $10,000,000 per annum, one-half of which will be net profit! Typo would be sorry to take a share in the concern as a gift.

On the 22nd March a remarkable libel case was heard in Dunedin. Mr Joseph Wilson Robinson, an architect, had annoyed a young lady by accosting her in the evening, and forcing his company upon her. Her brother demanded an apology, and receiving no satisfaction, caned the architect, who charged him at the police court with assault. The law was vindicated by a penalty of one shilling and costs, and the magistrate commented strongly on complainant's conduct. For reporting the magistrate's remarks, commenting thereon, and thereby « degrading the plaintiff and subjecting him to public hatred, ridicule, and contempt, » the Evening Star was sued by Mr Robinson for libel, damages being laid at £50,000! The jury, after an an absence of three hours, found a verdict for defendants, which was entered with costs. The costs on a case involving such extravagant damages amounted to £1,262 10s, which it is scarcely necessary to say the plaintiff was not in a position to pay. A reform in the law of libel is urgently required, when a respectable newspaper, in the discharge of its ordinary functions, may be put to endless trouble and expense in defending such a preposterous action as that instituted by Mr Joseph Wilson Robinson.

The Wellington Evening Post, as will be seen by a paragraph elsewhere, has been less fortunate than its Dunedin contemporary. The ways of a jury are often mysterious indeed.