Show THE intelligent compositor there are some things that the average printer cannot or will not do and some that he both can do and does the former are not nearly so BO numerous as the latter so they may be cats cataloguer catalogued catalo aped gued before a schedule is attempted or of his virtues the average compositor cannot be persuaded that there is such a word as ingenuous ly he is certain to make it into ingeniously ingenious at least nine times ou out toften of ten and then to restore the average between the u and the 1 he is very likely to make insidious into insidious 22 possibly misled by ly which he uniformly gets right aai norum however to is consensus ly which lie he will set up con census in spite of the united efforts of writer proof mader leader and a whole staff of editors the word census seems seeing to carry him off tits his feet and he lives and dies in the belief that the cite longer word is 18 census with the con prefixed every printing effice has what are called style rules which are in ended to be followed as closely as pos stole aiole A common though not universal rule is that figures are to be used instead of printing the nu out at length lut this rule could hardly excuse the compositor for setting up the familiar line of the old hymn so that it ready read 1 ten en thousand thousand are their tongues but all their joys are 1 I 1 l or for spoiling t the editors quotation frum front the song meet rue me in the liue lane at half past nine 1 aby by setting it up meet me in the lane at 11 one more illustration completes the category of his ordinary misdeeds whenever an a attempt t is made to quote the celebrated chapter on tile the snakes of iceland which is comprised in the words there are no snakes in ireland the compositor no matter how legible his copy will convert iceland into 1 I reland ireland the st patrick legend be ing apparently more familiar to him than the history of iceland but now let us see what the compositor can do and does do every day of his life he takes a manuscript the chirography ro of which would make the lid of a chinese tea chest blush with envy translates it into the vernacular as he be goes along corrects the spelling and the 9 grammar bammar and oftentimes the rhetoric and turns it out not as the author wrote it but as he fie intended to write it he sets up better english abar most men can write he can detect errors of fact as well as of style he can give the horse borse editor points on spurting 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 a profound leader on economics economic and he can do more hard bard anti and intelligent work in a given time if he has to than any other sort of hand handicraftsman setting betting off then his bis eccentricities and idiosyncrasies against his fund of general information his knowl knowledge edgo of a wide range of subjects and his ability to discriminate between good and bad literary work it is surely no misnomer to call him the intelligent com coax 11 san francisco chronicle |