(4) Alterations by Superimposition.
Frequently an author may start to write one word and then change his
mind. Sometimes he merely deletes the false start and continues on the line
with the different word, but sometimes he may choose merely to write the
new word over the letters of the false start. Changes of mind like
this—whether occurring during composition or in later revision—must
be recorded, for often an acute critic can guess from the context what the
original word would have been if it had been completed, and more
information is gained about the author's style. In the description the word
over means, literally, this superimposition and it must always
be distinguished from above which describes an interlineation.
True revisions of this nature are to be distinguished from mere mendings
in which a writer touches up an ill-formed letter for
clarity—these are not worth recording.
[18] Allied to such mendings as not worth
recording are the repairs of inadvertent slips, such as letters transposed in
haste or an anticipated letter written too soon, or occasionally what may be
a genuine but inadvertent misspelling. Mechanical slips created during the
haste of composition add little or nothing to a critical view of an author,
and their value would seem to be nil. When a repaired genuine misspelling
can be distinguished from a slip, it may be thought of sufficient interest to
record. Discretion is needed, of course, even at the expense of uniformity
of procedure. For example, if one's author is a notably good speller but he
hastily writes
ocult and then squeezes in the second
c, the expense of noting the slip is wasted effort. On the
other hand, if occasionally he shows a little weakness about the
ei and
ie words, and writes
reciept, only to alter it by
ei
over
ie, an editor may choose to record the fact. But suppose
a good speller starts to write
propi, stops, alters the
i to
o, and then continues
sition,
the odds favor not a misspelling but a mind outrunning the pen. The value
of such information, given the expense of notation, cannot ordinarily be
justified.
However, an editor needs to be on the watch for alterations of letters
that probably mean a change to a different form of the word. For instance,
if the manuscript reads dialectic with the penultimate
i written over an a, the probability that
dialectal had at one moment been in the author's mind is
sufficiently strong to merit the entry: dialectic] second 'i'
over 'a'. An editor seeking some rule of thumb might
propose to ignore mended slips of non-words or impossible spellings, but
if an actual word has been originally formed, he might decide to record its
alteration in order to prevent any mistake in editorial judgment from
concealing what might have been momentarily an authorial intention.
Moreover, special reasons may attend more scrupulous than usual notation.
Note: For instance, at 115.23 of
The O'Ruddy Stephen
Crane inadvertently wrote
firsts but corrected it to
fists by deleting the
r. On its own merits this
slip is not worth attention since
firsts made no sense in
context and could never have been written intentionally. Moreover, if the
slip had been caught at the moment of writing and Crane had inscribed
t over the
r before he formed the final
s, an entry would doubtless have been wasted on trivia. As
it stands, however, the mending at a later time becomes part of a small
body of evidence that bears on
the question of Crane's care in working over this manuscript, a matter of
considerable critical importance. On these terms it deserves an entry, for
its import is far greater than a simple case of carelessness in inscribing a
memorial error without immediate correction.
Typical entries for revision and correction are:
- explanation] first 'n' over 'i'
- clearness] 'c' over 'g'
- hole] 'ho' over 'sa'
- truth] 't' over 'T'
- True] 'T' over 't'
- Dr.] 'D' over 'M'
In the first column the examples represent either obscure slips or else the
start of words that may be guessed at but not demonstrated; hence they
would not be subject to the formula
altered from. In the
second column an editor if he chose could write, for instance: Dr.]
alt. fr. 'Mr.', and so with: True]
alt. fr. 'true'.
It would seem that an editor need not be consistent but could choose
whichever form seemed to him either immediately clearer or else more
economical: the exact method by which the alteration was accomplished is
of little specific interest here.
'true']
single quotes over double (or)
sg. qts. ov.
db. (or)
alt. fr. '"true"' mine?]
question over
exclamation mark (or)
quest. ov. exclam. (or)
query over exclamation
[19]
Some superimposition revisions occur in connection with other
alterations:
- take] ab. del. 'hear'; 'e' over
'en'
- *take] ('e' over 'en'); ab. del.
'hear'
The first entry illustrates a good general rule that the position of the word
specified by the lemma may seem more important than alterations in its
form and should ordinarily come first. However, another method for
writing the same information might be: take]
alt. fr. 'taken'
ab. del. 'hear', which is only slightly longer. It would be
possible, of course, to write: take]
ab. del. 'hear';
alt.
fr. 'taken' but the form has less coherence than
alt. fr.
'taken'
ab. del. 'hear'. When only a single lemma word is
being noted, even though two alterations are described there is seldom
ambiguity no matter which form (as above) is chosen. Problems begin to
arise when the lemma must be two or more words. For instance, the
following entry is improper because its note of the alteration could apply
either to 'take' or to 'take in': take in]
ab. del. 'hear';
alt. fr. 'taken'. The expansion created by quoting
would solve the ambiguity, of course: take in]
ab. del. 'hear';
'e'
of 'take'
over 'en' (or) 'take'
alt.
fr. 'taken', (or, in this case) *take in] ('e'
over 'n');
ab. del. 'hear'. [If the alteration had been in
hear one could write, take in]
ab. del. 'hear'
('e'
over 'a').] Indeed, quoting is necessary only to refer to
a specific word in a lengthy lemma, or to a lemma that does not list the
altered word, or to a lemma which has more than one example of the
altered letter: take in more]
ab. del. 'hear greater'; 'take'
alt. fr. 'taken' (or) 'e'
of 'take'
over 'en' (or) we . . . sense]
ab. del. 'we
derive more meaning'; 'e'
of 'take'
over 'en'.
In the first case, the bold use of the double dagger, if favored, would
condense the entry: ††000.00 take ['e'
ov. 'en'] in more]
abov. del. 'hear'. Psychologically, the deeper the information
of a letter alteration
within the description, the more annoying it is for a reader to refer back to
the lemma when the word is not quoted, and thus a clash may result with
the general principle of the usefulness of providing the information about
position first: take in difficult]
ab. del. 'distinguish more
complex'; 'e'
ov. en'. One way of getting around this
difficulty, without quoting, is to place the alteration of the letters first but
with a special sign that indicates that the usual order has been broken: take
in difficult] ('e'
over 'en');
ab. del. 'distinguish
more complex'. Although this parenthesis is more useful for lemmas of two
or more words than for a single word, an editor alert to any possible
misunderstanding of his meaning can employ it flexibly. For instance, he
might feel that: take]
ab. del. 'know'; 'e'
ov.
'en' could scarcely be misread, whereas: take]
ab. del.
'hear'; 'e'
ov. 'en', despite the semicolon, could trouble a
reader
whether
take or
hear were in question, and
hence that: take] ('e'
ov. 'en');
ab. del. 'hear'
closes all possible avenues for error. On the whole, it may be thought that,
without quoting, the use of parentheses in this manner coming before the
position provides the happiest solution. Without quoting, unless the
description is so long as to puzzle a reader about the quoted word when he
finally comes to it, priority may ordinarily be given to position. Alternate
forms would be:
When] aft. del. 'Even'; bef. del. 'the';
'W' over 'w'
When] (alt. fr. 'when'); aft. del. 'Even';
bef. del. 'the'
*When] ('W' over 'w'); aft. del. 'Even';
bef. del. 'the'
When we meditate] ab. del. 'As we think'; 'W'
of 'when' over 'I'
*When we meditate] ('W' over 'I'); ab.
del. 'As we think'
In some forms of entries the use of altered from may
condense the description when the exact means of alteration is of no
significance.
*is. Each] alt. fr. 'is, each'
is. Each] ('E' over 'e'); period aft. del.
comma
is. Each] period aft. del. comma; 'E' over
'e'
Note: This is as good a place as any to discuss the font of the
punctuation to be used in descriptions to the right of the bracket. As has
already been remarked, one often encounters at the present day the printer's
convention that the font of punctuation should agree with the font of the
preceding word, as in aft. del. comma; when the font of the
next word changes. This arbitrary and illogical convention is completely
unsuited not only for descriptive bibliography (where it would create the
utmost confusion) but also for all general scholarly writing, where clarity
and precision demand the choice of the font for punctuation on purely
syntactical, not on supposedly aesthetic, grounds. To repeat, a crucial
distinction of meaning results from the correct use of the sentence's
syntactical roman punctuation in such an example as, 'James generally
insists in his books on the spellings tho, altho,
and connexion; but he is content to pass the printer's
photograph for his manuscript spelling-reform
fotograf, and alphabet for
alfabet.' On the other hand, when the punctuation is
syntactically part of an italic passage, it must also be in italic: 'James writes
as follows: Suppose, to fix our ideas, that we take first a case of
conceptual knowledge; and let it be our knowledge of the tigers in India,
as we sit here.' In writing descriptive apparatus entries, it is of more
than minor importance to adopt the same syntactical logic. Theoretically it
should make no difference whether an editor chose to consider the italic
description to the right of the bracket as the major syntactical font, or the
roman of the usual quotations, in which case the italic would be considered
to be only a distinguishing device and thus secondary to the roman font.
Perhaps no distress may be felt in typography like: period aft. del.
comma; 'E' over 'e'; but this is inconsistent in its
roman quotation marks as
well as in the roman semicolon, and true syntactical consistency would
require an entry like: ('E' over 'e'); period aft. del.
comma (or) ab. del. 'As we think'; 'W'
of 'when' over 'I', in which all parentheses and
quotation marks would need to be in italic as well as commas and
semicolons. The effect is not pleasing; more important, the marking of copy
for the printer would need to be scrupulous and infinitely detailed, and the
proofreading and resulting correction of the printer's inevitable mistakes
would be expensive. In the edition of William James it eventually proved
a practical necessity to adopt the principle of roman syntactical punctuation
in all the apparatus and to forsake the difficulties (and indeed the partial
inconsistencies) that resulted from an attempt at the opposite in the Stephen
Crane edition. Copy must still be carefully marked to emphasize to a printer
that he must not ordinarily follow an italic word with italic
punctuation both in the text and in the apparatus. In the examples in this
article, it will be observed, parentheses, square brackets, quotation marks,
commas, and semicolons not part of an italic quotation are invariably
printed in roman. This assumes that the major font of the apparatus is
invariably roman.
It is the normal interpretation of the above that the change was not made
during the original inscription but as an afterthought, and so with: What]
'W' over 'We', 'hat' interl.[20] On the contrary, an entry
using
altered from would in this case be ambiguous whether
the change were made currently or on review: What]
alt. fr.
'We'. The compression of the latter must be balanced against the value of
the information of the precise description. One must also consider that not
all precise descriptions do in fact distinguish the time of alteration. The
following entry could represent a change made during inscription or on
review: What] 'Wh'
over 'We' (which could be further
condensed under the circumstances to: What]
over 'We'). If
an editor felt the distinction were important, he could always expand: What]
'Wh'
over 'We', 'at'
squeezed in (or the
reverse: 'What'
currently over 'We').
In the examples so far, the alteration of letters by superimposition has
affected words in the lemma that constitute a unit of description. Sometimes
alteration of letters in one word can be combined with changes that need
recording in an adjacent word or words; but in such cases the problems of
position versus clarity may be intensified. For instance, the question of
distance arises in such an entry as: When we discover] 'discover' ab.
del. 'find'; 'W' over 'w', which can be solved by
quoting: 'discover' ab. del. 'find'; 'W' of
'When' over 'w' (or) by the parenthesis: *('W'
over 'w'); 'discover' ab. del. 'find'. On the
other hand, since in double-column typesetting two lines would need to be
devoted to this combined description, the question arises whether in the
long run the reader is not better served by two brief separate entries, also
taking up two lines:
- When] 'W' over 'w'
- discover] ab. del. 'find'
