These and the other asteroids are now more commonly designated by a inclosing the number indicating the order of their discovery.

HINTS

ON

THE PREPARATION OF " COPY,"

AND ON

PROOF-READING.

In preparing and bringing out a book for publication, a great number of persons are employed; each of them having to use more or less the brain, the hand, and the eye; to call into action the principles of mind, mechanism, and taste; to occupy, in short, his special department of duty and toil. For our present purpose, however, we will mention only three agents who play a prominent though an unequal part in the production of a book, and who have particularly to do with the mode in which it is executed. These are the author, the compositor, and the proof-reader; the producer of the ideas, the arranger of the types, and the corrector of the typographic errors.

Let us suppose, then, that the writer of a work, instead of transcribing it as many times as would be requisite for the perusal of his friends or his fellowmen, is desirous of saving himself this trouble, and of having a large number of copies put into their hands by means infinitely more rapid; namely, through the agency of the printing-press. Before, however, taking this step, he will ascertain whether his manuscript or, as it is technically called, "the copy" be in

a suitable condition for being made out by the compositor and the proof-reader. If it consists of orations, discourses, lectures, or poems, certain portions of which have, for his own accommodation in delivery, been underlined, but which are not to be printed in Italics or small capitals, he will carefully expunge all such marks. He will examine if proper names and foreign or technical expressions, supposing them to occur, have been correctly spelled and clearly written; rectifying the inaccuracies, and making the obscure perfectly plain and legible. He will dot the i's, and cross the t's, which, in the haste of composition, may have been left imperfect; change such capital I's and J's as may be confounded with each other; and re-form whatever letters may be blurred or ill-shapen, particularly the s's in the terminations of plural nouns. He will see whether the interlineations, if there be any, have been introduced with sufficient distinctness. Should he make additions in the margin, or on the opposite or a separate leaf, he will mark with a caret the place of insertion, and say whether they are designed as text for the body of the matter, or as notes for the foot of the page; putting such or any other direction within a circle, that it may be readily noticed. If points have been omitted, he will supply them; if erroneously made, correct them. All words and phrases, which, for his own ease, he has abbreviated, he will write in full; and at the commencement of any sentence meant to begin a new paragraph, but not distinctly exhibited as such, he will put the mark (T) appropriated for that purpose.

If, however, after all this care, an author find, on re-inspection, that the manuscript cannot without diffi