Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1878 — Slovenly Manuscript. [ARTICLE]

Slovenly Manuscript.

I have the misfortune to have a manuscript before me at this moment that would fill thirty of these pages, and yet from beginning to end there is no indication that it is not to be read at a single breath. The paragraph ought to be, and in all good writers It is, as real and as sensible a division as the sentence. It is an organic member in prose composition with a beginning, a middle, and an end; just as a stanza is anorganic and definite member in the compssition of anode. “I fear my manuscript is rather disorderly,” says another, “but I will correct carefully in print.” Just so. Because he is too heedless to do his work in a workmanlike way, he first inflicts fatigue and vexation on the editor whom he expects to read his paper; seoond, he inflicts considerable and quite needless expense on the publisher; and thirdly, he inflicts a great deal of tedious and thank lets labor on the printers, who are for the most part far more meritorious persons than fifth-rate authors. It is true that Bmke returned such disordered proofs that the printer usually found it least troublesome to set the whole afresh, and Miss Martineau tells a story of a Scotch compositor who fled from Edinburgh to avoid a great living author’s manuscript, and,, to his horror, was presently confronted with a piece of copy which made him ory, “ Lord, have mercy! Have you got that man to print for ?” But most editors will cheerfully forgive such transgressions to all contributors who will guarantee that they write as well as Burke or Carlyle. Alas, it is usually the case that those who have least excuse are the worst offenders. The slovenliest manuscripts come from persons to whom the difference between an hour and a minute is of the very smallest importance. This digression is to be excused, partly by the natural desire to say a word against one’s persecutors, and partly by a hope that some persons of sensitive conscience may be led to ponder whether there may not be, after all, some moral obligations even toward editors and printers.— John Morley, in Fortnightly Review.