Many people are now printing as separated words such mere fragments as _non_, _quasi_, _counter_ as in _counter-suit_ and _counter-movement_, _vice_ as in _vice-chairman_, and a few others, though the writer has not seen _ante_ or _anti_ so treated. These prefixes are all of the same nature, and if one of them is treated as a separate word, every one of the others should be so.
These are things that should be combated by proof-readers who know the main principles of language form, even though they know also that human perversity is sufficiently willful at times to persist in the face of all reason.
Another sort of whim has full swing on the New York _Mail and Express_. That paper prints the name of its own political party capitalized, and that of the opposite party with a small initial--Republican and democrat. How the editors can suppose that this belittles the Democrats is past finding out, since it should be a matter of pride to a true United States Republican that he is a democrat. Such ignoring of language principle is silly, and belittling to those who indulge it rather than to those at whom it is aimed. It is, however, beyond the proof-reader’s province, unless the reader is sufficiently familiar with the editor to influence him by moral suasion.
Notwithstanding the certainty that authors will be more or less whimsical, it is the proof-reader’s duty to do all he can to make the matter he reads perfect in every respect. He should be able to challenge anything that does not conform to generally accepted rules of grammar, and to state clearly his reasons for desiring to make changes.
A thorough practical knowledge of English grammar is indispensable to a good proof-reader, though it counts for nothing without a quick eye to detect errors. If Bullions’s English Grammar had been read by a proof-reader as well equipped in grammatical knowledge as every reader should be, that book would have been cleared of one of the most ludicrous blunders possible. After stating that abridging is cutting short, examples are given, including the following: “When the boys have finished their lessons we will play. _Abridged_--The boys having finished their lessons we will play.” The second sentence is one word shorter than the first, but the tense is changed, and so, of course, the sense is changed. Real abridgment, of course, would not change the time from future to present; yet this is what a noted teacher does in each of his examples of abridgment, and it is something that a thorough proof-reader would have helped him not to do.
