gation for
his safety." The minister, either through carelessness or short
sightedness, misread the request thus: "A sailor, going to see his
wife, desires the prayers of the congregation for his safety."

A few days since, a gentleman wrote on a slip of paper the address of
a friend, namely: "Adolph Windermeer, Jr., care of Sylvester Windsor &
Co., New York." Not seeing any comma after the name "Sylvester" or
"Windsor," I inquired if "Sylvester" was the Christian name of
"Windsor;" to which he replied (marking in a comma), "Oh, no."

A few of the above illustrations I have taken from my father's book on
Punctuation.

While the rules governing punctuation are now generally adopted, there
are a few cases where printers and proof-readers disagree. In the
division of a word at the end of a line, the English prefer to divide on
the vowel, as in _ha-bit_, _pre-face_, _pro-phet_; the American, on the
consonant, as _hab-it_, _pref-ace_, _proph-et_. The former division
shows the _origin_ of the word; the latter, its _pronunciation_. Of the
two, I prefer the English style; for instance, in the word _cre-a-tion_,
of three syllables, it is better to divide on the second vowel, thus
_crea-tion_,--the syllable _tion_ being more easy to pronounce; and the
vowel at the beginning of a line being unsightly.

It is also not uncommon, in some American books, to omit the comma
after the second noun in the case of the mention of _three_ nouns,
as in the sentence, "Industry, honesty, and temperance are essential
to happiness," and also to omit the comma after the second name in
the sign of a firm of three, as, "Little, Brown, & Co." While in
this country the omission of the comma in these instances is often
made, it by no means follows that such omission is correct. Another
difference from the English practice is that of omitting the comma
after the given number of a street, as, "274 Washington Street." In
this case, the grammatical reason for placing the comma after the
number is that there are not 274 Washington _streets_, but that the
meaning is No. 274 _of_ Washington Street.

Many authors and printers vary also in the capitalization of certain
compound titles or names, as, the "Charles River," the "river Thames,"
"New York City," the "city of Boston," the "Blue Hills," the "White
Mountains,"--the words _River_, _City_, and _Mountain_ beginning with
a capital letter or with a small letter according to their position in
the sentence