g the times when it is not employed upon more
important work.

Indeed, an attachment has recently been added to the machine, whereby
its use as a type-caster is still further extended. As has been
mentioned, the machine casts and composes type of any sized face, from
five to fourteen point. With, however, the attachment referred to, it
can now cast for the use of the hand compositor complete fonts of type
up to and including thirty-six point in size, so that an entire book,
title-page included, nowadays often owes its typographical "dress" to
the ingenious machine known as "The Lanston Monotype."

PROOF-READING

By George L. Miller.

When part of a book has been set up in type, in what is called "galley
form," an impression is taken, technically known as "first proof," and
this proof is handed to the proof-reader. This long-suffering
individual lives in a chronic state of warfare with the compositors on
the one hand and the author on the other. His first duty is to see
that the proof agrees with the author's manuscript, that nothing has
been omitted, and nothing inserted that is not in the copy. He must
see, further, that the spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar,
and so forth, are correct, and the book set according to the "style"
ordered. He first of all, therefore, compares the proof with the
manuscript, or an assistant reads the manuscript aloud, the
proof-reader listening intently for any variation from the proof
before him and marking any errors he may find.

Now this seems easy enough, and if every author prepared his copy
carefully, so that there could be no possible mistake as to his
meaning, nothing would be easier; but in practice a number of
questions arise which would never be thought of by an outsider. On a
new work being put in hand, some half-dozen compositors are given a
few sheets of copy apiece, and if the proof-reader happens to be
readily accessible he is bombarded within the first half-hour or so
with, "How am I to spell centre?" "Has travelling one or two l's?"
"Shall I capitalize the word State?" "Shall I spell out two hundred?"
"Do you want ships' names in Italic?" and so on and so on. As to
punctuation, every compositor thinks he knows better than proof-reader
and author combined and follows his own sweet will. As every error on
the first proof must be corrected by the compositor at his own
expense, here arises the cause of war mentioned in our opening
paragraph.

Much