young men and women of limited experience, or by elderly persons who have outgrown all desire to improve the quality of their workmanship or to qualify themselves for better-paid situations.
The irresponsibility of the inexpert compositor is largely increased by his consciousness that there is in the house a proof-reader whose business it is to correct all his faults. Compositors of all grades would make fewer mistakes if they had to pay a proper penalty for all wilfully slighted composition. Contrary to prophecies made some years ago, typesetting machines have proved to be aids to correct composition. The operator who makes an error in every other line, as is not uncommon in hand composition, is soon required to give up his machine. To be advantageous, the machine must be operated by a workman who does not average many errors to a paragraph.
Even when exceeding care has been taken in the selection of able compositors and readers, there is liability to error from oversights and unforeseen accidents. Crapelet[1] tells us of the sore distress of his father in discovering the error of Pelenope for Penelope, in a treatise which he had carefully read three times with intent to make it in all points a faultless book. He had read it too often; he did not have the assistance of a second reader; and his memory failed when most needed. Even the careful reader may pass unobserved the transposition of
- ↑ Études pratiques et littéraires sur la typographie, p. 233.
