 | |  |
v. List of Ambiguous Line-End Hyphenation
Until Fredson Bowers called attention to the matter in 1962,[53] no consideration (to my knowledge) had been given to the editorial problems raised by possible compound words hyphenated at the ends of lines. Such hyphenation clearly presents problems in two ways: first, when a possible compound is hyphenated at the end of a line in the copy-text, the editor must decide whether to print the word in his edition as a hyphenated word or as a single unhyphenated word; second, when a possible compound is hyphenated at the end of a line in a scholarly critical edition, the editor must have some means for informing his readers whether this word should be reproduced, in any quotation from the text, as a hyphenated word or as a single unhyphenated word. As a result, the necessity of including two hyphenation lists in the apparatus of critical editions cannot be denied. The first of these lists, recording line-end hyphenation in the copy-text, is essential to complete the record of editorial decisions. The editor's decision whether or not to retain a line-end hyphen in a given word can be more difficult than some of his decisions reported in the list of emendations. Yet it does not really produce an emendation, for if he prints the hyphen he is only retaining what, after all, is already present in the copy-text; and if he eliminates the hyphen he is only treating it as the printer's convention for marking a run-over word. Obviously some line-end hyphens present no problems: those simply breaking a word which cannot possibly be a compound (as "criti-|cism"), where the hyphen is only a typographical convention, not to be retained when the word will fit within a line; and those dividing compounds in which the second element is capitalized (as "Do-|Nothing"), where the hyphen is to be retained whenever the word is printed. But in between is a large area of possible compounds where no automatic answers can be given; the treatment of these hyphens depends on various factors (the author's characteristic usage, the conventions of the time, and the like), and the editor is not providing readers with a full record of his textual decisions unless he specifies these cases. The second list, recording line-end hyphenation in the editor's own text, is necessary if the editor is to complete his task of establishing a text — for if there are places in a text where a reader does not know precisely what reading
Because the Center for Editions of American Authors has required editions prepared under its auspices to include the two hyphenation lists (as specified in its 1967 Statement of Editorial Principles), the value and importance of these lists are becoming more widely recognized. Among the CEAA editions themselves, however, there are some variations in form, arrangement, and approach; and a glance at the principal variations will suggest some of the factors which need to be considered in setting up these lists. Probably the most noticeable difference among editions is in the order of the two lists. One may feel that it makes little difference about the order, so long as the two lists are there; but if an editor is trying to follow some consistent rationale in the overall arrangement of the entire apparatus, then surely one arrangement of the hyphenation lists fits that scheme better than another. Several editions (the Crane, Fielding, Hawthorne, and Simms and The Mark Twain Papers) place the critical-text list before the copy-text list, while several others (the Dewey, Howells, Irving, and Melville) reverse this order. The general rationale outlined above suggests placing nearest the text those parts of the apparatus taking up decisions affecting the edited text. Following this plan, the copy-text list should precede the critical-text list, for the copy-text list does record editorial decisions and in this sense is an appendage to the list of emendations (the immediately preceding section, according to this arrangement); the critical-text list, on the other hand, does not involve editorial decisions in establishing the text[55] but only printer's decisions
Indeed, the functions of the two lists are so different that it is some-what artificial to place them side by side; only the superficial fact that both deal with hyphenation has caused them to be grouped together. The copy-text list fits logically into the textual apparatus because it is historically oriented: that is, it records certain words in a historical document about which the editor of a critical text has to make decisions. But the critical-text list is merely a guide to the proper interpretation of certain fortuitous typographical features (hyphens) of a given edition of that critical text; its usefulness is not in studying textual problems but simply in reading the edited text. In other words, the edited text is not really complete without the critical-text list, for without it certain hyphens in that text would be ambiguous. The other parts of the apparatus are important to certain audiences, but the edited text could of course be printed without them; the critical-text list, on the other hand, is essential to all audiences, and the edited text should never be printed without it. If, for example, a publisher leases a CEAA text and reproduces it photographically, he should include the critical-text list, whether or not he is including any other apparatus; if, instead, he sets the CEAA text in type anew, he should prepare a new critical-text list which applies to his own edition. It is extremely unfortunate that the copy-editors' convention for indicating to the printer which hyphens are to be retained (one hyphen above another, resembling an equals sign) has never become a generally accepted convention for use on the printed page; if an editor could utilize such a double system of line-end hyphens, the printed form of his edited text would be self-contained, without any typographical ambiguity requiring a separate list to elucidate.[56] As matters stand, however, to do so would violate the notion of clear text, since the double hyphen would strike the reader as an unfamiliar symbol. It will not be possible, therefore, in the foreseeable future to eliminate the critical-text list, and yet it presents something of an anomaly in the textual apparatus. Logically it should be separated from the rest of the apparatus and placed as an independent entity immediately following the text. Yet it is unrealistic to think that the easy grouping together of all matters connected with hyphens will be readily superseded; and
Some editions contain more than two lists in the section on line-end hyphenation. For instance, a third list that sometimes appears (as in the Crane, Dewey, Fielding, Hawthorne, and Simms editions) is a short one recording those instances in which a line-end hyphen occurs in a possible compound in the critical text at the very point where a line-end hyphen also falls in the copy-text. The function of a separate list of these words is to show that the established forms in these cases result from editorial decisions. Nevertheless, these words do not logically constitute a third category; they merely belong to both the preceding categories. A simpler arrangement, therefore, would be to have only the two lists — the copy-text list and the critical-text list — with certain words appearing in both. The introductory note to the critical-text list could not then say — as these notes do in some editions — that the words occurred with hyphens (or without hyphens) in the middle of lines in the copy-text; it would have to say that for each word the "established copy-text form" is listed. If the reader wishes to know which forms were established through editorial decision, he can quickly check the appropriate spot in the copy-text list to see if the word also turns up there.[57] Still another hyphenation list which has been employed (as in The House of the Seven Gables and The Marble Faun) records line-end hyphens in the critical text which are true emendations (that is, hyphens at points where none are present in the copy-text). Again, such words do not form a separate category but, rather, readings that belong in two categories — in this case the critical-text hyphenation list and the list of emendations. The simplicity of an arrangement which keeps the number of word-division lists down to the basic two is not merely an advantage to the bewildered reader who may never have encountered any hyphenation lists before; it also dramatizes the logical division between the two functions which hyphenation lists serve.[58] Furthermore, it sets as few obstacles as
The matter of deciding just which line-end hyphens are to appear in these lists can be approached in two ways. One method is to list all compound words and all words which might be regarded as compound, if they are hyphenated at a line-end, recording the forms they should take when they fall within the line; such a list would contain both hyphenated and unhyphenated words. Another method is to list only those words whose line-end hyphens are to be retained when the words come within a line and to say that all other line-end hyphens can be ignored as compositorial word-division; such a list would contain only hyphenated words.[59] Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. The first system has the advantage of being explicit (listing all words about which a question might arise), whereas the second proceeds by implication (making the absence of a word assume positive significance); on the other hand, the second system has the advantage of covering in condensed fashion — through its combination of direct statement and implication — every instance of line-end hyphenation in an entire work, whereas the first may result in an extremely long list and still omit words that some readers would consider "possible compounds." Presumably one could infer, even in the first type of list, that omitted instances of line-end hyphens are not significant (that is, that those hyphens should not be retained in transcription), but the fact remains that the actual content of the list is not precisely defined, since the question of what constitutes a "possible compound" is a subjective one. It might never occur to one person to think that the line-end hyphens in "cup-|board" or "inter-|view," for example, should be retained, while another person might expect to find them in the list for explicit guidance. The first kind of list, in other words, is somewhat inefficient, because for all its length it may always fail to note words considered "possible compounds" by some people; the second type of list, in contrast, can in shorter space be positively complete, because
This second type of approach, then, might seem preferable for the hyphenation lists in a scholarly edition, were it not for two further considerations. In the first place, this approach, for full effectiveness, requires that one have at hand the edition referred to. That is, if an editor says that all line-end hyphens, other than those listed, are merely compositorial, the reader who wishes to look over those allegedly compositorial hyphens must consult the edition under discussion and run his eye down the right margin of the pages. Furthermore, if the policy of an apparatus is to record all the editor's textual decisions, those instances in which a line-end hyphen in a possible compound has been dropped are just as significant for inclusion as those instances in which it has been retained; to define the first category by a process of elimination (as what remains after the second category is specified)[60] is as unfair to the reader as to make silent emendations, for it requires him to search through a text himself to locate the individual instances. It becomes obvious, therefore, that one of these methods is more appropriate for one of the hyphenation lists, and the other method is more appropriate for the other list. The copy-text list should follow the method of noting all possible line-end compounds and showing the editorially established form of each, with or without hyphens — for this list refers to a document outside the volume which the reader has in his hands at the moment, and it records editorial decisions necessary for the reader to know about in evaluating the editorial process or in reconstructing the copy-text. The critical-text list, on the other hand, more appropriately follows the system which notes only those line-end hyphens to be retained in transcription — for this list refers to the printed form of the text in the volume already in the reader's hands, and it has nothing to do with editorial decisions. In other words, the more explicit system is necessary for a full recording of editorial decisions, whereas the more concise system is preferable for elucidating purely typographical ambiguities of the new edition. Once again, the differences in the purposes of the two lists are reflected in differences in method. If the hyphenation lists are set up in this way, and if their introductory comment[61] and their form[62] are kept as simple as possible,
| | |