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Show t THE INTELLIGENT COMPOSITOR Hit Occasional Blunders and Faults Overbalanced Over-balanced by Ills Good Deeds. There are some things that theaver-age theaver-age printer cannot or will not do, and some that he both can do and does. The former are not nearly so numerous numer-ous as the latter, so they may be catalogued cata-logued before a schedule is attempted of his virtues. The average compositor says tho San Francisco Chronicle, cannot be persuaded that there is such a word as ingenuous." He is certain to make it into "ingenious" at least nine times out of ten; and then, to restore the average between the u and the i, he is very likely to make "insidious" into "insiduous," possibly misled by "deciduous,", "de-ciduous,", which he uniformly gets right. His pons asinorum, however, is "consensus," which he will set up "coDcensus" in spite of the united efforts ef-forts of writer, proof-reader and the whole staff of editors. The word "census" seems to carry him off his feet, and ho lives and dies in the belief that the longer word is "census," with tho "con" prefixed. Every printing oflleo has what are called "style rules," which are intended intend-ed to be followed as closely as possible A common, though not universal, rule is that figures are to be used instead of printing the numbers out at length, but this rule could hardly excuse the compositor for setting up the familiar line of tho old hymn so that it read, 10,000,000" (ten thousand thousand) ' -are their tongues, but all their joys are 1," or for spoiling tho editor's quotation from the s:mg. "Meet Mo in the Lnno at Half Fast Nine," by setting set-ting it up. "Meet Mo in tho Lane at 9:30." One more illustration completes the category of his ordinary misdeeds. Whenever an attempt is made to quote the celebrated chapter, "On the Snakes of Iceland," which is comprised in tho -,,l. i.Tl,.,,,., , 1.... : T . . words, "I here are no snakes in Ice- land," tho compositor, no matter how j legible his copy, will convert "Ice- ! land" into "Ireland." the St. Patrick legend being apparently more familiar to him than tho history of Iceland. But now let us see what the compositor compos-itor can do and does every day of his life. He takes a manuscript, the chi- j rography of which would make the lid j of a Chinese tea chest blush with envy, translates it into the vernacular as ho j goes along, corrects the spelling and j grammar, and oftentimes the rhetoric, I and turns it out, not as the author j wrote it, but as he intended to write it. He sets up better English than most men can write; he can detect errors of fact as well as of stylo; he can give the horse editor points on sporting matters, and the religious editor on theology; he can appreciate even the merits of a discussion on the tariff, and detect the fallacies in ft profound leader on economics; and he can do more hard and intelligent work in a given time, if he has to, than any other sort of handicraftsman. Setting off, then, his eccentricitios and idiosyncrasies against his fund of general information, his knowledge of j a wide range of subjects, and his ability j to discriminate between good and bad literary work, it is surely no misnomer to call him the "intelligent coimosi. tor." |