Identity area
Reference code
Add. MS a/355/3/18
Title
Note from R. W. Chapman to R. B. McKerrow
Date(s)
- 5 Jan. 1927 (Creation)
Level of description
Item
Extent and medium
1 single sheet
Context area
Name of creator
Repository
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
Clarendon Press, Oxford.—Comments on a passage about dictation.
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The Clarendon Press, Oxford
5 January 1927.
A priori, I think that if dictation was resorted to it was in the exceptional cases you suggest (bad light and the like). Is not composition so slow a process that to employ a regular reader must always be uneconomic (unless it were an unpaid apprentice)? Proofreading, now, is often done by use of a reader. Could some of the oddities, supposed to be due to dictation, be accounted for as corrections introduced at this stage? I wonder.
(I don’t credit the story of the man reading to a number of compositors!)
RWC
R. B. McKerrow, Esq.
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Typed, except initials and an underlining. At the head is the reference ‘Pkt. 428/RF’.