The New York Times crossword puzzle for Sunday, March 29, included the clue "Odd-numbered page" for the word "recto". This came to mind on Saturday when I was re-reading Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects by Peter Geach. It is not that Geach touches on the terms of publishing and printing, rather that I became aware that the odd-numbered page I was reading was on the verso of the physical leaf. And so it runs from page 1 (verso) through page 136 (recto).
This did not impede my reading, merely annoyed me as another example of the carelessness of production at Legate Street Press, which I have complained of before. What did slow me a little was off-by-one errors in references to sections. At times a reference to §x will turn out to be a reference to §x + 1. So in §18, there is a reference to an a treatment in §18, which turns out to mean §19. Now these are are not the sort of errors that can be introduced by optical-character recognition (OCR), which the press pretty clearly used. Was the volume copied by some chance an uncorrected proof?
Carelessness like this is why I qualify my enthusiasm for works moving quickly into the public domain. I don't just want the text of a book, I want the corrected text, meaning among other things text with the references to section numbers squared away. I want some context, for example the date of publication. I would like assurance that somebody, not necessarily a philosopher, but a competent editor, has looked at the page proofs before the book went to press. And that assurance is destroyed by a contradiction of the long-standing practice that odd numbered pages appear on the verso, and by erroneous section references.
Competent editors were discarded some time ago, depriving (a) the world of clean text and (b) competent editors of a pleasant way to make a living. Progress backwards.
ReplyDeleteA few hang on, here and there. I know a couple, though one must be semi-retired. But on the whole you are correct.
DeleteWhere is Legare Street Press located? Many of those outfits that are hastily reprinting facsimiles of out-of-print books are based in India, and I don't think they care much for the content or subject matter of the books themselves. They scan or OCR the original books and then usually make them available through print-on-demand. When I've needed to read some extremely rare books, I've been pretty disappointed by what similar companies are putting out there.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that Legare Street Press has a physical location. The book says only that it is an imprint of Creative Media Partners, Inc. As you say, there are a lot of companies out there doing this sort of thing, and without particular regard to the product.
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