the connection between the two pages; but the catchword is now out of use, and it is not missed. It may be that the reader of the future will have a similar opinion of the present method of dividing words on syllables only. A feeble resistance against the tyranny of the rule has already been made by some amateurs in printing. If, to prevent bad spacing, it is proper to divide a word like Geo rge on the o (as it here appears) in the large type of the displayed lines of the so-called artistic title-page, why is it not proper to repeat the practice in the small type of the text of the same book? Is a division on two letters, or even on one letter,[1] as offensive as a wide spacing of words in one line and their narrow spacing in the line following? It is not probable that this innovation will find favor with the critical, but it may be mentioned as an exhibit of increasing restiveness at grammatical and typographical shackles which annoy the reader and do not help and do hinder the proper rendering of printed words.
Beadnell, Wilson, Bigelow, Drew, and Teall have written on the division of words much that may be read with advantage by every compositor; but these writers admit that printed words can be, and
- ↑ Not much attention seems to have been paid to a systematic division of words even by good printers of the eighteenth century. In Baskerville's edition of Paradise Lost, I find these divisions in the preface by Milton: e-specially and o-therwise, and they appear in lines where there was no real need for a division of these long words on the single letter.
