Making a Point

by David Crystal

  I single out Wordsworth because, by his own admission, he was hopeless at punctuation and abdicated all responsibility for it. As he was preparing the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, he wrote to the chemist Humphry Davy (28 July 1800) and asked him to check the text for punctuation:

  You would greatly oblige me by looking over the enclosed poems, and correcting anything you find amiss in the punctuation, a business at which I am ashamed to say I am no adept.

  He had never even met Davy! The suggestion had come from Coleridge. And not only does he ask this total stranger to correct his work, but later in the letter he asks Davy to send the corrected manuscript directly on to the printer, without referring back to him. Which bits of the end product’s punctuation are due to Davy, the printer, or the author we shall never know.

  A roll-call of literary authors between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries would show them lining up under Jonson or Wordsworth. Among the Jonsonians is John Dryden, who in one of his letters (4 December 1697) complains to his publisher, Jacob Tonson, that ‘the Printer is a beast, and understands nothing I can say to him of correcting the press’, and in another insists that his work be printed ‘exactly after my Amendments: for a fault of that nature will disoblige me Eternally’. Although relationships later improved, he was not at all happy with Mr Tonson, whom he pilloried in an epigram (published in Faction Displayed, 1705):

  With leering Looks, Bullfac’d, and Freckled fair,

  With two left Legs, and Judas-colour’d Hair,

  With Frowzy Pores, that taint the ambient Air.

  Printers beware, when dealing with satirical poets! Or, as we shall see later, novelists like Mark Twain.

  Keats also took a keen interest in the way his publisher dealt with his copy. In a letter of 27 February 1818 to John Taylor, he writes:

  Your alteration strikes me as being a great improvement—the page looks much better. And now I will attend to the Punctuations you speak of—the comma should be at soberly, and in the other passage the comma should follow quiet. I am extremely indebted to you for this attention and also for your after admonitions.

  And Tennyson asked his publisher Edward Moxon (letter of 13 October 1832) to ‘send me every proof twice over. I should like the text to be as correct as possible.’

  Among the Wordsworthians is Thomas Gray, who in an undated letter in 1768 gives over eight pages of instructions to Foulis Press about how to print his poems, but adds: ‘please to observe, that I am entirely unversed in the doctrine of stops, whoever therefore shall deign to correct them, will do me a friendly office.’ And Byron writes to John Murray (26 August 1813) to ask: ‘Do you know any body who can stop—I mean point—commas, and so forth? for I am, I fear, a sad hand at your punctuation.’ And in a P.S. to a later letter (15 November 1813) he adds: ‘Do attend to the punctuation: I can’t, for I don’t know a comma – at least where to place one.’

  Printers obviously had the final responsibility of making a work look attractive, so that people would buy it. They knew that browsers in a bookshop – then as now – pick up a book and flick through the pages to see if it is for them. And among the many factors which influence the decision to buy are the layout of the text and the clarity of the writing, in both of which punctuation plays an important part. So it’s unsurprising that they paid especial attention to this aspect of the copy. It was not just a matter of adding the occasional comma. There were major ambiguities that had to be sorted, such as when an author failed to use quotation marks consistently, so that it was impossible to identify who was saying what in a conversation. Charlotte Brontë, in the persona of C Bell, writes (24 September 1847) to her publisher Smith, Elder & Co about the proofs of Jane Eyre:

  I have to thank you for punctuating the sheets before sending them to me as I found the task very puzzling – and besides I consider your mode of punctuation a great deal mo[re] correct and rational than my own.

  The printers had to frequently correct her use of quotation marks and to insert colons, semicolons, and periods into what was a very lightly punctuated and difficult-to-read manuscript. She wasn’t atypical. It wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that it became routine for authors to submit clean copy on sheets of the same size, writing on just one side of the paper, and avoiding the heavy self-corrections that can make a manuscript illegible.

  The major printing manuals of the period all address the issue. John Smith’s Printer’s Grammar (1755) is mainly about the work of the compositor, and deals with the different fonts, letter sizes, differences between large and small capitals, and other technical matters. When he addresses the topic of pointing, he distinguishes two kinds of writer:

  [some authors] point their Matter either very loosely or not at all: of which two evils, however, the last is the least; for in that case a Compositor has room left to point the Copy his own way; which, though it cannot be done without loss to him; yet it is not altogether of so much hinderance as being troubled with Copy which is pointed at random, and which stops the Compositor in the career of his business more than if not pointed at all.

  Writers, Smith finds, are typically lax:

  most Authors expect the Printer to spell, point, and digest their Copy, that it may be intelligible and significant to the Reader.

  He has no time for the grammarians, whom he accuses of artifice in the way they introduce rules (I imagine he is thinking of such things as the pause equations mentioned in Chapter 8) that have no basis in real life:

  When we compare the rules which very able Grammarians have laid down about Pointing, the difference is not very material; and it appears, that it is only a maxim with humourous Pedants, to make a clamour about the quality of a Point; who would even make an Erratum of a Comma which they fancy to bear the pause of a Semicolon, were the Printer to give way to such pretended accuracies. Hence we find some of these high-pointing Gentlemen propose to increase the number of Points now in use.

  And he adds that printers must take a firm stand when dealing with one of these high-pointing gentlemen.

  Smith also draws attention to the increasingly important role of correctors – we would call them copy-editors today – whose role is to review manuscripts to avoid compositors having to make changes at proof stage. By the time Charles Stower wrote another Printer’s Grammar (1808) – a much-used authority in the early nineteenth century – the balance of power had changed within the printing-house: the primary responsibility for accuracy of copy was now in the hands of the corrector, who ‘should make it a rule never to trust a compositor in any matter of the slightest importance – they are the most erring set of men in the universe’. The corrector had considerable editorial power in those days. It is his responsibility, says Stower, to eliminate from a manuscript any anomalies ‘of no real signification; such as far-fetched spellings of words, changing and thrusting in points, capitals, or any thing else that has nothing but fancy and humour for its authority and foundation’.

  It was the same in the USA. By the end of the nineteenth century, the professionals employed by a publisher had grown to include proof-readers as well as copy-editors, and their role is highlighted by Thomas Mackellar in his influential The American Printer: A Manual of Typography (1866):

  The world is little aware how greatly many authors are indebted to a competent proof-reader for not only reforming their spelling and punctuation, but for valuable suggestions in regard to style, language, and grammar,—thus rectifying faults which would have rendered them fair game for the petulant critic.

  Today, a single professional body combines both these editorial tasks: in the UK, it is the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.

  None of this stopped petulant criticism being directed at publishers, when it came to punctuation. Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury and author of The Queen’s English (1864), has little to say about the subject, but when he does address it (in his section 124) he pulls no punches:

  I remember when I was young in printing, once correcting th
e punctuation of a proof-sheet, and complaining of the liberties which had been taken with my manuscript. The publisher quietly answered me, that punctuation was always left to the compositors. And a precious mess they make of it.

  What sort of thing did they do? He goes on:

  The great enemies to understanding anything printed in our language are the commas. And these are inserted by the compositors, without the slightest compunction, on every possible occasion.

  He is particularly angered by commas being used on either side of adverbs such as too or also (he is no supporter of Murray here) or separating adjectives in such phrases as a nice young man. He recalls a printer inserting a comma after the first word in However true this may be. And he blames printers for the excessive use of ‘notes of admiration’ (i.e. exclamation marks):

  These shrieks, as they have been called, are scattered up and down the page by the compositors without mercy.

  He recommends writers to use as few as possible.

  However, on the whole during the nineteenth century there are signs of a growing rapprochement between grammarians and printers. We see the influence of printers in the content of some grammars; and we see printers taking more serious note of what grammarians have had to say.

  Interlude: Strong language

  Mark Twain is famous for his long-running battle with printers and correctors.

  In 1889:

  Yesterday Mr. Hall wrote that the printer’s proof-reader was improving my punctuation for me, & I telegraphed orders to have him shot without giving him time to pray.

  In 1893:

  In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made proof-readers.

  And in 1898, in a letter to his publisher Chatto & Windus dated 25 July 1897:

  I give it up. These printers pay no attention to my punctuation. Nine-tenths of the labor & vexation put upon me by Messrs. Spottiswoode & Co consists in annihilating their ignorant & purposeless punctuation & restoring my own.

  This latest batch, beginning with page 145 & running to page 192 starts out like all that went before it – with my punctuation ignored & their insanities substituted for it. I have read two pages of it – I can’t stand any more. If they will restore my punctuation themselves & then send the purified pages to me I will read it for errors of grammar & construction – that is enough to require of an author who writes as legible a hand as I do, & who knows more about punctuation in two minutes than any damned bastard of a proof-reader can learn in two centuries.

  10

  Passing the buck

  The notion that printers should pay attention to scholars had been around a long time. We see it in the preface to the second volume of the meticulously detailed Mechanick Exercises: Or, the Doctrine of Handy-works. Applied to the Compositors Trade (1683). Joseph Moxon lays down the basic rule: ‘a Compositor is strictly to follow his Copy’, but immediately adds:

  the carelessness of some good Authors, and the ignorance of other Authors, has forc’d Printers to introduce a Custom, which among them is look’d upon as a task and duty incumbent on the Compositer, viz. to discern and amend the bad Spelling and Pointing of his Copy, if it be English.

  How is the compositor to do this? Moxon recommends:

  it is necessary that a Compositer be a good English Schollar at least; and that he know the present traditional Spelling of all English Words, and that he have so much Sence and Reason, as to Point his Sentences properly: when to begin a Word with a Capital Letter …

  And when we get to the section where we might expect some detailed advice (p. 224), we see his total reliance on what the scholars have written:

  As he Sets on, he considers how to Point his Work, viz. when to Set , where ; where : and where . where to make ( ) where [ ] ? ! and when a Break. But the rules for these having been taught in many School-books, I need say nothing to them here, but refer you to them.

  It is an early example of buck-passing.

  By the nineteenth century, printers were more explicit. Here’s the opening paragraph of a book written by the printer George Smallfield in 1838, The Principles of English Punctuation:

  Punctuation is the art of dividing a written or printed composition into sentences, or into parts of sentences, by the use of points, or stops, for the purpose of marking the different pauses which the sense and an accurate pronunciation require. This definition of the word punctuation presupposes that the reader understands Grammar.

  He then follows Murray scrupulously in his account of the parts of speech, and carefully counts out the length of pauses for commas, semicolons, colons, and periods. It’s all very derivative, but he has clearly read enough about grammar to see that the situation isn’t clear-cut. He knows that grammarians don’t always agree. For example, he considers the use of commas in this sentence:

  Climate soil, laws, customs, food, and other accidental differences, have produced an astonishing variety in the complexion, features, manners, and faculties, of the human race.

  And he adds a note:

  Some Grammarians would omit the comma after certain words in most of the above examples, – after the nouns food and differences, manners and faculties.

  Aware of the divided usage, he tries to justify his choice with a grammatical argument:

  If, however, the reader attentively considers the construction, he may be convinced, that food and differences are no more the nominative to the verb have produced than the preceding nouns are; and, that manners and faculties are no more the object of the verb, than complexion and features. By applying these observations to the other examples, the reader may possibly arrive at the conclusion, that in each sentence every one of the commas is necessary as a guide to the sense, and to an accurate pronunciation.

  May possibly … This may have convinced people in the nineteenth century, but it certainly didn’t convince them in the twentieth. Neither of the commas after differences and faculties would be considered acceptable today.

  We need to remember that this is not a grammarian writing, but a printer, trying to make the best of what the school-books say. And he’s perceptive, able to see that what the school-books say is not always enough to solve the problems writers and printers face. Smallfield is confident enough to maintain the orthodox printer’s position: if an author ‘should not feel satisfied that he can point accurately, he would do well to leave this matter to the care and experience of his printer’. At the same time he notes: ‘It may, however, occasionally happen, that his manuscript has been placed in the hands of an ignorant or a careless compositor.’ He therefore ends his book with a list of proof-correcting marks – in effect, showing writers how to take the final responsibility for the appearance of their work.

  In 1844, a Manchester printer, John Wilson, wrote a widely read treatise called A Treatise on Grammatical Punctuation. It is aimed at everyone, as his subtitle reflects:

  designed for letter-writers, authors, printer, and correctors of the press; and for the use of academies and schools.

  Everyone is mentioned, because everyone is to blame. In a long passage in his Introduction, he sums up the unsatisfactory state of affairs. Punctuation, he says, has not received the attention it deserves. While allowing a few exceptional cases of competent usage, he fires at everyone (I break his long paragraph into sections):

  The mental philosopher and the philologist seem to regard it as too trifling for attention, amid their grander researches into the internal operations of the mind, and its external workings by means of language.

  The grammarian passes it by altogether unheeded, or lays down a few general and abstract principles; leaving the difficulties of the art to be surmounted by the pupil as well as he may.

  The lawyer engrosses in a legible character, which, however, by its deficiency in sentential marks, often proves, like the laws of which he is the expounder, ‘gloriously uncertain’ as to the meaning intended to be conveyed.

  The painter, the engraver, and the lithographer, appear to set a
ll rules at defiance, by either omitting the points, or by misplacing them, wherever punctuation is required.

  The letter-writer, with his incessant and indiscriminate dashes, puts his friend, his beloved one, his agent, or his employer to a little more trouble, in conning over his epistle, than is absolutely necessary.

  Even the author – who of all writers, ought to be the most accurate – puts his manuscript into the printer’s hands, either altogether destitute of grammatical pauses, or so badly pointed as to create an unnecessary loss of time to the compositor.

  And as for the printer:

  It is a fact well known to those connected with the press, that compositors in general have a very deficient knowledge of punctuation.

  His own book, he hopes, will result in progress. But, a century and a half on, much of what he says could apply just as appositely today.

  Wilson puts all his money on the grammatical approach, and cites Lindley Murray as his main source. In his Introduction he asserts that ‘the art of punctuation is founded more on a grammatical than on a rhetorical basis; that its chief aim is to unfold the meaning of sentences, with the least trouble to the reader; and that it aids the delivery, only in so far as it tends to bring out the sense of the writer to the best advantage’. At the same time, he recognizes that the grammatical treatises are ‘deficient either in an explanation of exceptions and difficulties – in examples and exercises – or in rules and remarks, illustrative of the diversified functions …’.