Few persons realize fully the accomplishment and acuteness of perception necessary for the best proof-reading. He is the best reader who, in addition to mechanical experience and accuracy, has a comprehensive education and can apply it practically. Of course, we can not expect our reader to know absolutely everything, but he should at least know enough to suspect error when there is evident occasion for suspicion, and challenge it for the author’s attention when that is possible. He should have general information sufficient to enable him to correct absolute error when he can not refer the matter to author or editor--a contingency frequently arising in newspaper-work.
Above all, the thoroughly accomplished proof-reader will know enough not to make changes in what is written when he has no right to do so. He will often know that what is written can not be right, and yet will have sense enough not to alter it without authorization. He will also have sense enough to assume a certain amount of authority on proper occasion, as in the case of an evident slip in the copy of work that has a set form. A good example is work like the definitions of verbs in the “Century Dictionary.” In these definitions the word _to_ is used only with the first clause. The good proof-reader will have the word omitted even if it does happen to be in the copy, notwithstanding the strictest orders to follow copy; in fact, this is so plain a case that a very good compositor even would not set the word in the wrong place. Another forcible instance comes to hand at the moment of writing, in a letter written by a New York proof-reader, who mentions _Assemblyman_ Amos J. Cummings. Mr. Cummings never was an Assemblyman. He is a _Congressman_, and Chairman of one of the important Congress committees; moreover, he is an old-time New York compositor. When he was an editor on a New York paper another present Congressman was reporting Brooklyn news for the same paper. Almost every Brooklyn item sent in at that time had, in the writing, parallel streets reported as crossing, or cross-streets as being parallel; and these errors were frequently corrected in the proof-room.
The proof-reader who can and does make such corrections is much better for such work than one who merely catches typographical errors, even if he sometimes allows a wrong letter to pass in reading. Certainly a New York reader, especially a union man, should know better than to write of _Assemblyman_ Cummings; and it would be well for all proof-readers to be sufficiently up in current affairs to correct the error, though it would not be fair to insist upon such correction as part of the reader’s qualification.