TRIPPINGS IN TYPE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11658, 13 June 1912, Page 6

TRIPPINGS IN TYPE.

THE ERRATIC COMMA,

It is the erratic, comma that is responsible for many of our heartiest laughs, whether we read, "Deceased blew out his brains after bidding his wife good-bye with a gnn" ; or "For sale, a phaeton, the property of a gentleman with a movable head as good as new." One interesting announcement runs—"We have decided to erect a schoolhouse large enough to accommodate five hundred scholars five storeys high" ; and another- i -"This hotel vail be kept by the widow of the former landlord, Mr Brown, who died last summer on a new and improved plan." A grateful editor amiouioce —"We received a. basket of fine grapes from our friend Mr W - for which he will please accept our compliments some of which are nearly two inches in diameter."

The richest crop of these "<.-omn;acalities" is perhaps to be found'in the advertisement columns, where we read such startling announcements as these : "Wanted, a saddle-horse for a lady weighing nine hundred and fifty pounds." "Wanted a young man to tnke care of a pair of mules of 'a Christian disposition." "For sale, a horse calculated for a 'charger cr would carry a lady with a. switch-tail." "For sale, piano by lady in elegant walnut case on carved supports." "To rent a cottage containing eight rooms and an acre of°!and" ; and. also io rent, "two rooms furnished with a young widow." The havoc, that can. be wrought by. a misplaced comma was never better illustrated than by the following extract from a description of the Jubilee procession in an East Anglican paper:—"Next came Lord Roberts riding on a grey Arab steed wearing a splendid'searlel uniform, covererecl with medals on. his head, a fieldmarshals hat with plumes in his hand, the baton of a field-marshal on his rugged feature; a rmiie of pleasure as he acknowledged the thundering cheers of the crowd."

But the compositor by no means depends for his unconscious humour on a solitary letter, or a comma "gone wrong." His resources are much wider, for he can as readily transform "He-kissed her under the silent stars" into "He kicked her under the cellar stairs," as he. can make an M.P. misquote Tennyson so far as to declaim, "Better fifty years of Europe than a- circus in Bombay." In hjs' capable and so-well-meaning hands, Mr Swift MacNeil-once made the startling statement:—"The resident magistrates cculd no more state n case than they could ride a Greek goat," when Mr MaeNeill really said—"Write a, Greek ode." Sir William Harcourt's exclamation —"Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" similarly became "Great Dinah, what a farce it is!" And the late Earl of Carnarvon was credited with having said—"ln these ! days clergymen are expected to have the wisdom of a journeyman tailor," and not that of a "Jeremy Taylor." One cannot, however, help suspecting that the reporter may have had a hand in one or more of these misrenderings; but it was Mr Compositor . who transformed "lines, bands, and striae in the violet part of the spectrum" into "links, bonds, and stripes for the violent part of the spectrum" and made Sir Herbert Maxwell responsible for giving the title of one of his illustrations as "The Home of the s JJlack Bugs," when it was

"Black Bass" all the time. 1 Mr F. G. Atialo was made to write—"l lied (lived) over those tense moments again and again"; and in. Mr Oscar Browning's "Saw the. fell serpent round thy heart entwine," the fell serpent was metamorphosed into the "sea-ser-pent.—"Weekly Telegraph.''