CALIBER. This word is sometimes used very absurdly; as, "Brown's Essays are of a much higher _caliber_ than Smith's." It is plain that the proper word to use here is _order_.
CANT. _Cant_ is a kind of affectation; affectation is an effort to sail under false colors; an effort to sail under false colors is a kind of falsehood; and falsehood is a term of Latin origin which we often use instead of the stronger Saxon term LYING!
"Who is not familiar," writes Dr. William Matthews, "with scores of pet phrases and cant terms which are repeated at this day apparently without a thought of their meaning? Who ever attended a missionary meeting without hearing 'the Macedonian cry,' and an account of some 'little interest' and 'fields white for the harvest'? Who is not weary of the ding-dong of 'our Zion,' and the solecism of 'in our midst'; and who does not long for a verbal millennium when Christians shall no longer 'feel to take' and 'grant to give'?"
"How much I regret," says Coleridge, "that so many religious persons of the present day think it necessary to adopt a certain cant of manner and phraseology [and of tone of voice] as a token to each other [one another]! They _improve_ this and that text, and they must do so and so in a prayerful way; and so on."
CAPTION. This word is often used for _heading_, but, thus used, it is condemned by careful writers. The true meaning of _caption_ is a seizure, an arrest. It does not come from a Latin word meaning _a head_, but from a Latin word meaning _to seize_.
CARET. Cobbett writes of the caret to his son: "The last thing I shall mention under this head is the _caret_ [^], which is used to point upward to a part which has been omitted, and which is inserted between the line where the caret is placed and the line above it. Things should be called by their right names, and this should be called the _blunder-mark_. I would have you, my dear James, scorn the use of the thing. _Think_ before you write; let it be your custom to _write correctly_ and in _a plain hand_. Be careful that neatness, grammar, and sense prevail when you write to a blacksmith about shoeing a horse as when you write on the most important subjects. Habit is powerful in all cases; but its power in this case is truly wonderful. When you write, bear constantly in mind that some one is to _read_ and to _understand_ what you write. This will make your handwriting and also your meaning _plain_. Far, I hope, from my dear James will be the ridiculous, the contemptible affectation of writing in a slovenly or illegible hand, or that of signing his name otherwise than in plain letters."