Proofs
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CORRECTION OF. The corrections to be made on a "proof" of printed matter are marked on the margin; and for this purpose an established set of signs is used. The following specimens of a proof exhibits the application of most of these signs: "To rule the nations with imperial swøy, to impose terms of peace, to 1 a spare the humbled, and to rcush the 2 tr. proud, resigning itto others to de- 3# scribe the courses of the heavens, and 41 explain the rising stars; this, to use in the apostrophe of Anchises to Fabius in the Shades was regarded 6,/ A as the proper province of a Roman. 5 S. caps. The genius of the people was even 7 stet. more adverse to the cultivation of the 89 physical sciences than that the Euro- 9 of A pean Greeks and seen we havel that 6;/2 tr. A the latter left experimental philosophy chiefly in the hands of the Asian and 10 wf. African colonists, The elegant litera-6 ture and metaphysical specuulations 11 8 1 3 2 of Athens, her histories, dramas, epics, 2 tr. and orations, had a numerous host of admirers in Italy, but a feeling of 12 Roman indifference was displayed to the practical science of Alexandria. ['This 13 T repugnance of the Roman mind at 14 and its home to mathematics and physics, despotism A extending from the Atlantic to the abroad, Indiano cean, from Northern Britain 3 15 to the cataracts of the Nile, annihilated in a measure-all pure sciences 16 the in the conquered districts where they 17 had had been pursued, and prohibited 11 8 attention to them in the mother 18-/ 19 Run on country. Long, indeed, after the age of Ptolemy, the school in connection 5 Caps. with which he flourished, remained 20 v in existence; &c. A (1) A wrong letter. After every mark of correction a line should be drawn, to prevent its being confounded with any other in the same line. (2) A word or letter to be transposed. Where letters only are to be transposed, it is better to proper strike them out, and write them in their sequence in the margin, like a correction. (3) A space wanted. This mark is also used when the spacing is insufficient. (4) A space or quadrant type. One line is sub-sticking u (5) Alteration of drawn under the word for italics, two for SMALL CAPITALS, three for CAPITALS. (6) Correction or insertion of stops. (7) A word struck out, and afterward approved of (Latin stet, "let it stand"). (8) A turned letter. (9) An omission. (10) A letter of a wrong font. (11) A word or letter to be deleted. (12) Alteration of type. (13) A new paragraph. (14) Insertion of a clause. (15) A space to be removed or diminished. (16) A do not wrong word. (17) When letters or lines stand even. (18) Mark for a hyphen. (19) No new paragraph. (20) The manner in which the apostrophe, inverted commas, the star and other references, and superior or "cock-up" letters and figures are marked.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's set out these marginal signs in 1921, they were instructions to a compositor standing at a case of metal type: "wrong font" meant a stray sort from another case, and a "turned letter" was one literally upside down in the line. Hot-metal composition gave way to photosetting and then, from the 1980s, to desktop publishing, so the physical faults most of these twenty marks describe can no longer occur. The marks themselves survive in reduced form — stet, tr, the delete hook and the paragraph sign are still listed in style manuals such as the Chicago Manual of Style, and Britain's BS 5261 codified a standard set for proof correction — but most editing now happens in Word's tracked changes or as PDF annotations, where the correction is made in the text rather than signalled in the margin. The one convention Collier's stresses, drawing a line after each mark so corrections in the same line are not confused, has no equivalent on screen.
Written for this edition, 2026.