date, or other information. This sort of appendix was called a colophon.
The practice of writing colophons was taken over by the early printers
and is the source of much of our most valuable information concerning
the early products of the press. Occasionally the title of the work was
given at the beginning although the custom of beginning the work with
the statement of its title, developing into the title page as we know
it, did not become general until some time after the invention of
printing. Occasionally a manuscript was even furnished with running
titles on the page heads. The pages were not numbered until after the
invention of printing.

After the earliest times quotations were indicated by ticks on the
margin or by indented paragraphs. Sometimes the substance of the
quotation was written in a smaller hand or otherwise distinguished from
the body of the text. Scribes were by no means infallible and
corrections are not uncommon. Erasures on papyrus were difficult, if not
impossible, and therefore other means of correction had to be used. This
is particularly the case because writing material was too expensive to
be wasted and a copyist's mistake could not be permitted to spoil a roll
of a papyrus or a sheet of vellum. In the case of vellum, however, if
the mistake were immediately discovered the ink could be washed off with
a sponge. If, however, the mistake were discovered only on revision
after the ink had bitten into the vellum, it was necessary to use the
knife and to restore the surface as well as possible by rubbing it with
some smooth hard substance like the rubber shown in the illustration on
page 13. Superfluous letters or words were sometimes removed by drawing
a pen through them and sometimes removal was indicated by dots, or small
marks, which might be over the letters, under them, or even in the open
spaces of the letters themselves. Attempts were occasionally made to
make one letter over into another to correct a mistake. Omitted passages
or notes are inserted in the margin with some indication of the place
where they should be read in the text. Abbreviations and contractions
were very extensively used, partly to avoid labor and partly to save
material. Phrases of frequent occurrence and perfectly well-known
meaning were indicated simply by initials like the familiar S. P. Q. R.,
Senatus Populusque Romanus, the Roman Senate and People, or the
s. s. a. b. s. m. used by Spaniards to close letters, mea