These and the other asteroids are now more commonly designated by a O inclosing the number indicating the order of their discovery. HINTS ON THE PREPARATION OF 66 COPY," AND ON PROOF-READING. In preparing and bringing out a book for publication, a great number of persons are employed; each of them having to use more or less the brain, the hand, and the eye; to call into action the principles of mind, mechanism, and taste; to occupy, in short, his special department of duty and toil. For our present purpose, however, we will mention only three agents who play a prominent though an unequal part in the production of a book, and who have particularly to do with the mode in which it is executed. These are the author, the compositor, and the proof-reader; the producer of the ideas, the arranger of the types, and the corrector of the typographic errors. Let us suppose, then, that the writer of a work, instead of transcribing it as many times as would be requisite for the perusal of his friends or his fellowmen, is desirous of saving himself this trouble, and of having a large number of copies put into their hands by means infinitely more rapid; namely, through the agency of the printing-press. Before, however, taking this step, he will ascertain whether his manuscript – or, as it is technically called, "the copy"- be in a suitable condition for being made out by the compositor and the proof-reader. If it consists of orations, discourses, lectures, or poems, certain portions of which have, for his own accommodation in delivery, been underlined, but which are not to be printed in Italics or small capitals, he will carefully expunge all such marks. He will examine if proper names and foreign or technical expressions, supposing them to occur, have been correctly spelled and clearly written; rectifying the inaccuracies, and making the obscure perfectly plain and legible. He will dot the i's, and cross the t's, which, in the haste of composition, may have been left imperfect; change such capital I's and J's as may be confounded with each other; and re-form whatever letters may be blurred or ill-shapen, particularly the s's in the terminations of plural nouns. He will see whether the interlineations, if there be any, have been introduced with sufficient distinctness. Should he make additions in the margin, or on the opposite or a separate leaf, he will mark with a caret the place of insertion, and say whether they are designed as text for the body of the matter, or as notes for the foot of the page; putting such or any other direction within a circle, that it may be readily noticed. If points have been omitted, he will supply them; if erroneously made, correct them. All words and phrases, which, for his own ease, he has abbreviated, he will write in full; and, at the commencement of any sentence meant to begin a new paragraph, but not distinctly exhibited as such, he will put the mark (T) appropriated for that purpose. If, however, after all this care, an author find, on re-inspection, that the manuscript cannot without diffi culty be deciphered, he will either fairly transcribe it himself, or cause it to be transcribed by a good penman. He, or his amanuensis, will write on only one side of the paper, and mark the number of each page, that the copy may admit of being cut into portions; put, if necessary, into the hands of several compositors; and, after having been set up, be re-arranged in its proper order. He will see that the orthography, the capitals, and the points, which were perhaps imperfectly attended to in the original manuscript, be all conformed to the best usages of the present day. He will distinguish the paragraphs by commencing each in a new line, and putting its first word at a greater distance from the edge of the paper, at the left hand, than the other lines, to prevent sentences which should be separated from being brought together, or those which should be joined from being separated. On no account should the paragraphing be left to the compositor; it being unreasonable to expect him to perform a species of work for which no remuneration is given, and which peculiarly devolves on the writer himself. In the observations just made, we have assumed that an author takes all possible care to make his manuscript clear and legible; and, no doubt, many literary gentlemen are not ashamed to do their own work, instead of leaving it to be done, at the imminent. hazard of mistakes, by the compositor and the proofreader. But it is a well-known fact, at least to those conversant with subjects relating to the press, that manuscripts designed for publication are often found written so carelessly, or with so little regard to any system of capitalizing and punctuation, as to render the labor of printing them vexatious, unsatisfactory, and unproductive, first to the compositor, who, after coming to many a dead halt, and troubling ad nauseam his fellow-workmen, in attempting to decipher the copy, is obliged to creep his "slow length along," with all the patience that may be supplied by the prospect of miserable earnings; then to the corrector of the press, who, whatever may be his literary qualifications, is certainly not familiar with the unexpressed thoughts of authors, and cannot find an explanation of their flourishes, their half-written words, or their peculiar hieroglyphics, in any of the dictionaries at his command; and lastly to the master-printer, whose material is blocked up by the slow progress of the work in question, and whose pockets sometimes suffer from the cancelling of pages, which is not unfrequently as much attributable to scratches of the pen as to 66 errors of the press," as much owing to the carelessness of the author or his amanuensis, as to the incompetency of the printer or his workmen. We do not mean to apologize for the blunders of compositors, or to excuse the negligence and ignorance of proof-readers, but merely to express our sense of the injustice done to the profession of typography, when authors who have written illegibly, or who have themselves examined the proof-sheets without detecting mistakes, throw the whole responsibility on the shoulders of others. As a justification of our hardihood in thus laying down to authors instructions so minute and yet so obvious, we quote a paragraph, which has recently appeared in an English newspaper, showing the gross carelessness and utter want of thought manifested, on |