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February 16, 2008
Trithemius
“…printed books are often deficient in spelling and appearance. The simple reason is that copying by hand involves more diligence and industry.” - (p. 475) Trithemius, Writing Materials
It’s strange to think of people worrying that printers would make spelling errors and typos, but not scribes. I would imagine that humans would be more likely to make mistakes, and not machines. They just weren’t ready to give up the control they had over information.
Posted by Kayla Sawyer at February 16, 2008 2:38 PM
Comments
A human using a printing press would first have to set the type (that is, arrange all the little separate letter-shapes to get them ready for the ink that will be transferred to the page), and I think that is the point where the errors come in.
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at February 16, 2008 6:41 PM
I know I make dozens of mistakes when hand-writing. My notes from classes are very detailed, but have a lot of white out spots and scribbled out words (the perfectionist in me). I would think that since it was such a process to insert all the letter shapes, people would be more careful about the ordeal.
But I guess that if you made a mistake in a hand-written book, the mistake would be less harmful to the public (becuase it's only one book)than if a bunch of books from the press contained mistakes and were then distributed. Especially history books
Posted by: Daniella Choynowski at February 17, 2008 7:48 PM
Technology, such as the printer, is liable to make mistakes. "To err is human", I disagree with that because things that are not human are bound to screw up. Technology is not perfect.
Posted by: Jeremy Barrick at February 18, 2008 8:17 PM