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Subject:Re: peer edits From:Mary Cresswell <mcresswe -at- ACTRIX -dot- GEN -dot- NZ> Date:Wed, 29 Oct 1997 14:50:25 +1300
typesetters, who did not know Sanskrit, would
>catch grammar/spelling errors, when their rhythm was broken while setting
>the type. If they found that the hand movement to pick up the alphabets was
>wrong, they pointed such errors to the author; and sure enough the author
>agreed that they were right. Apocryphal? But sure made a good point to me.
Maybe it isn't just a story? In the 1960s, I helped edit a journal of
symbolic/mathematical logic. Occasionally I had a similar experience when
I was typing the formulae in text. I also heard that when Bertrand Russell
and A.N. Whitehead's "Principia Mathematica" was being typeset (Oxford Univ
Press? I forget which - in 1910 or so?) that the typesetters regularly
pointed out errors to the authors. And I heard that the typesetters were
almost always right.
I believe the Sanskrit typesetters!!!
Mary Cresswell * Technical writer & editor
P.O. Box 17-249 * Wellington, New Zealand
+64-4-475-7277; fax:+64-4-475-7279
mcresswe -at- actrix -dot- gen -dot- nz