Making a Point (9 page)

10

Passing the buck

The notion that printers should pay attention to scholars had been around a long time. We see it in the preface to the second volume of the meticulously detailed
Mechanick Exercises: Or, the Doctrine of Handy-works. Applied to the Compositors Trade
(1683). Joseph Moxon lays down the basic rule: ‘a Compositor is strictly to follow his Copy', but immediately adds:

the carelessness of some good Authors, and the ignorance of other Authors, has forc'd Printers to introduce a Custom, which among them is look'd upon as a task and duty incumbent on the Compositer, viz. to discern and amend the bad Spelling and Pointing of his Copy, if it be English.

How is the compositor to do this? Moxon recommends:

it is necessary that a Compositer be a good English Schollar at least; and that he know the present traditional Spelling of all English Words, and that he have so much Sence and Reason, as to Point his Sentences properly: when to begin a Word with a Capital Letter …

And when we get to the section where we might expect some detailed advice (p. 224), we see his total reliance on what the scholars have written:

As he Sets on, he considers how to Point his Work, viz.
when to Set , where ; where : and where . where to make ( ) where [ ] ? ! and when a Break. But the rules for these having been taught in many School-books, I need say nothing to them here, but refer you to them.

It is an early example of buck-passing.

By the nineteenth century, printers were more explicit. Here's the opening paragraph of a book written by the printer George Smallfield in 1838,
The Principles of English Punctuation
:

Punctuation is the art of dividing a written or printed composition into sentences, or into parts of sentences, by the use of points, or stops, for the purpose of marking the different pauses which the sense and an accurate pronunciation require. This definition of the word
punctuation
presupposes that the reader understands Grammar.

He then follows Murray scrupulously in his account of the parts of speech, and carefully counts out the length of pauses for commas, semicolons, colons, and periods. It's all very derivative, but he has clearly read enough about grammar to see that the situation isn't clear-cut. He knows that grammarians don't always agree. For example, he considers the use of commas in this sentence:

Climate soil, laws, customs, food, and other accidental differences, have produced an astonishing variety in the complexion, features, manners, and faculties, of the human race.

And he adds a note:

Some Grammarians would omit the comma after certain words in most of the above examples, – after the nouns
food
and
differences
,
manners
and
faculties
.

Aware of the divided usage, he tries to justify his choice with a grammatical argument:

If, however, the reader attentively considers the construction, he may be convinced, that
food
and
differences
are no more the nominative to the verb
have produced
than the preceding nouns are; and, that
manners
and
faculties
are no more the object of the verb, than
complexion
and
features
. By applying these observations to the other examples, the reader may possibly arrive at the conclusion, that in each sentence every one of the commas is necessary as a guide to the sense, and to an accurate pronunciation.

May possibly … This may have convinced people in the nineteenth century, but it certainly didn't convince them in the twentieth. Neither of the commas after
differences
and
faculties
would be considered acceptable today.

We need to remember that this is not a grammarian writing, but a printer, trying to make the best of what the school-books say. And he's perceptive, able to see that what the school-books say is not always enough to solve the problems writers and printers face. Smallfield is confident enough to maintain the orthodox printer's position: if an author ‘should not feel satisfied that he can point accurately, he would do well to leave this matter to the care and experience of his printer'. At the same time he notes: ‘It may, however, occasionally happen, that his manuscript has been placed in the hands of an ignorant or a careless compositor.' He therefore ends his book with a list of proof-correcting marks – in effect, showing writers how to take the final responsibility for the appearance of their work.

In 1844, a Manchester printer, John Wilson, wrote a widely read treatise called
A Treatise on Grammatical Punctuation
. It is aimed at everyone, as his subtitle reflects:

designed for letter-writers, authors, printer, and correctors of the press; and for the use of academies and schools.

Everyone is mentioned, because everyone is to blame. In a long passage in his Introduction, he sums up the unsatisfactory state of affairs. Punctuation, he says, has not received the attention it deserves. While allowing a few exceptional cases of competent usage, he fires at everyone (I break his long paragraph into sections):

• The mental philosopher and the philologist seem to regard it as too trifling for attention, amid their grander researches into the internal operations of the mind, and its external workings by means of language.
  
• The grammarian passes it by altogether unheeded, or lays down a few general and abstract principles; leaving the difficulties of the art to be surmounted by the pupil as well as he may.
  
• The lawyer engrosses in a legible character, which, however, by its deficiency in sentential marks, often proves, like the laws of which he is the expounder, ‘gloriously uncertain' as to the meaning intended to be conveyed.
  
• The painter, the engraver, and the lithographer, appear to set all rules at defiance, by either omitting the points, or by misplacing them, wherever punctuation is required.
  
• The letter-writer, with his incessant and indiscriminate dashes, puts his friend, his beloved one, his agent, or his employer to a
  little
  more trouble, in conning over his epistle, than is absolutely necessary.
  
• Even the author – who of all writers, ought to be the most accurate – puts his manuscript into the printer's hands, either altogether destitute of grammatical pauses, or so badly pointed as to create an unnecessary loss of time to the compositor.
  

And as for the printer:

• It is a fact well known to those connected with the press, that compositors in general have a very deficient knowledge of punctuation.
  

His own book, he hopes, will result in progress. But, a century and a half on, much of what he says could apply just as appositely today.

Wilson puts all his money on the grammatical approach, and cites Lindley Murray as his main source. In his Introduction he asserts that ‘the art of punctuation is founded more on a grammatical than on a rhetorical basis; that its chief aim is to unfold the meaning of sentences, with the least trouble to the reader; and that it aids the delivery, only in so far as it tends to bring out the sense of the writer to the best advantage'. At the same time, he recognizes that the grammatical treatises are ‘deficient either in an explanation of exceptions and difficulties – in examples and exercises – or in rules and remarks, illustrative of the diversified functions …'.

Throughout the nineteenth century, we see a growing realization that the existing grammar-books weren't providing the answers that people wanted. How could they, when they persistently expressed their uncertainty over rules and introduce their personal preferences? But there was no alternative. The only kind of grammars that were available were those derived from Murray. Every decade in the century thus produced treatises on punctuation which could do no more than state that the problem still existed and reformulate the same tired answers. One final example, before we move on, from the most influential of all guidelines to appear in the 1900s: Horace Hart's
Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press Oxford
, first published in 1893 as a single sheet of guidance, and soon amplified into a small book (I
quote from a 1950 edition). Hart was printer for Oxford University and controller of the university press for over thirty years.

This is a wide-ranging work, which at times goes well beyond what an author or grammarian would need to know, dealing with the typographical aesthetics of punctuation. For example, Hart recommends thin spaces to be used before apostrophes in such phrases as
that's
(=
that is
) in order to distinguish them from the ones used to mark possession. He allows no space between the initials in a name:
W.E. Gladstone
, not
W. E. Gladstone
. Indentation of the first lines of paragraphs is to be generally one em (the width of a letter
m
). No grammarian or author, not even Mark Twain, would be exercised about such things.

Hart maintains the traditional view about writers and punctuation, that they are ‘almost without exception either too busy or too careless to regard it', and he accepts the responsibility of doing something about it. He knows that compositors are human too, and even quotes Alford's ‘However' example to illustrate the way in which they have sometimes let authors down (p. 72). But where is the printer's knowledge of punctuation to come from?

The compositor is recommended to study attentively a good treatise on the whole subject. He will find some knowledge of it to be indispensable if his work is to be done properly.

The advice isn't as sound as it seems. A good treatise is presumably one that would have provided Hart with answers to all the punctuation decisions that he had to make, as well as explaining the stylistic variation that existed. And the sad fact of the matter is: there was no such thing.

The grammarians let Hart and his earlier colleagues down in several ways. The treatises often failed to agree in
their recommendations (such as whether to set off single adverbs by commas). Books written at different periods reflected changes in fashion (such as whether to punctuate abbreviations). Any late nineteenth-century printer following Lindley Murray would find that several of Murray's rules were no longer being observed by most writers (such as whether to put a comma between subject and predicate). And in place of principles that could be learned and applied, there would often be little guidance other than a general statement followed by examples, from which the reader was supposed to be able to generalize. Hart could do no other than adopt the same practice. For example, his section on the semicolon begins simply: ‘Instances in which the semicolon is appropriate.' There's no further explanation of what is meant by ‘appropriate', or what an inappropriate use of a semicolon might be.

Hart knows what the core problem is: there are two systems in use, one he calls ‘close and stiff' (a heavy style), the other ‘open or easy' (a light style). He doesn't think it's the job of the printer to tell an author which one should be used. But when he looks at the grammars, he finds that they say the same thing: where usage is divided, the ultimate decision about punctuation rests with the author. So studying attentively a ‘good treatise' is not always going to help. When a manuscript displaying unusual punctuation arrives at the publishers, is the idiosyncrasy due to authorial ignorance or authorial deliberation? If one of Hart's staff makes a change, will the response be Wordsworthian delight or Twainian fury?

What the nineteenth century shows is that punctuation is a classic case of ‘passing the buck'. When there is a confident writer, a competent printer, and a straightforward grammatical or rhetorical decision to be made, there's no problem. But where there is uncertainty over how to punctuate, disagreement among the professionals, or inconsistency in a
published work, we see circles of shifting blame and responsibilities. Writers ask publishers to sort out their inadequacies. The publishers do the best they can, but when things go wrong they blame their correctors or compositors or cite a lack of guidance from grammarians. The grammarians do the best they can, but when their rules don't work they explain it by referring to divided usage among – the writers. The writers blame themselves or the way they were taught in school. The schoolteachers explain that they are only doing what they have been told to do by the grammars, or by the dictats of a government-approved syllabus. And ministries of education, concerned about standards of achievement, make decisions based on what they think is the best practice – of grammarians and writers.

The printers looked to the grammarians for help; and the grammarians sometimes looked to the printers. A good example is the way Lindley Murray adds a section of his grammar devoted to ‘other characters, which are frequently made use of in composition'. He lists the apostrophe, caret, circumflex accent, hyphen, acute accent (showing stress), breve (to show vowel length), diæresis (Murray's spelling – ¨ to separate vowels), section mark (§), paragraph mark (¶), quotation marks, crotchets (square brackets), index (the hand
), brace (}), asterisk, ellipsis (…), obelisk (†), and parallels (||) – the last two showing sidenotes or footnotes. (Wilson goes even further in his listing of special symbols, including astronomical, mathematical, and medical signs.) Each item is given a brief description and illustration of its use. Murray's account is by no means complete – for example, he shows the apostrophe being used only with singular nouns, as in ‘a man's property' – but his explanations are accurate as far as they go, and in some cases are quite detailed, as in his description of the asterisk: