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Aggravating ladies

Chapter 8: STYLE OF PRINTING.
By Olphar Hamst
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About This Book

The essay combines practical guidance on bibliographic description and cataloguing with a compiled list of works issued under the pseudonym a lady whose authorship the compiler could not ascertain. It outlines principles for describing books, including attention to printing style, punctuation, beginnings and endings, errata, and methods for identifying anonymous and pseudonymous writers. Preliminary remarks and a preface explain the compiler's aims, limits, and appeal for assistance, and the volume discusses the challenges of recording nineteenth‑century English publications accurately. The book concludes with advertisements, an index, and notes on cataloguing practice meant to help readers supply correct bibliographic information.

STYLE OF PRINTING.

I now come to a few minor points of printing, for in a catalogue nothing is so trivial as not to require attention.

In the previous observations I have treated of things that are invariable, they must be attended to, in any list of books, there is no room for exercise of taste, they go to the very root of a good catalogue, and are laws dictated by accuracy.

But the manner in which a title is printed in a list or catalogue, or biography is a matter of taste, and we therefore give the following hints merely as suggestions[27], hoping that they will commend themselves to all who print title-pages. Have as few capitals as possible in the title, none except for names of persons or places. Titles of persons may well be printed without capitals, as prince, marquess, lord, not Prince, Marquess, Lord.

Take for example the following title, which, printed according to the usual method would be:—

“Speeches by the Lord Chancellor; Lord Brougham, Lord Cottenham; and Lord Campbell, in The House of Lords, on Tuesday the 9th, August, 1842, at giving Judgment in the Appeal, the Rev. John Ferguson and others, Appellants, against the Earl of Kinnoull, and the Rev. R. Young, Respondents, with the Judgments appended, from Mr. Gurney’s Shorthand notes,” &c.

I prefer this title-page for catalogue purposes to be printed thus:

Speeches by the lord chancellor [Lyndhurst], lord Brougham, lord Cottenham, and lord Campbell in the house of lords, on tuesday the 9th august, 1842, at giving judgment in the appeal, the rev. John Ferguson and others, appellants, against the earl of Kinnoull and the rev. R. Young, respondents; with the judgment appended from Mr. Gurney’s shorthand notes. Edinb. James Gall and son [1842], 8o, pp. 36, 1s. The improvement in appearance of this title and the facility in reading, counterbalance all such objections as that we are accustomed to Lord, and not lord, or Tuesday, and not tuesday. The compilers of the [English] Law List have long since discarded capitals for the names of streets with great advantage, for example they print, “gray’s-inn-square,” not Gray’s Inn Square: “court of exchequer”; “house of lords,” &c. The Catalogue of the Advocates library, lately printed, is a good example; refer for instance to the title under Bullion, vol I., 1867, p. 763, a title that in ordinary catalogues would bristle with capitals.

27. Most of which have been acted on, if not carried to their fullest extent in my study, already referred to: “A bibliographical list of lord Brougham’s publications,” printed in Lord Brougham’s Works, … Edinb., A. and C. Black, 1873, vol XI., pp. 463 to 486.