PROOF‐READERS AT THE CROSSROADS

Two years ago I wrote to the production manager of a well‐known firm of London publishers, virtuously pointing out that in one of his firm's latest non‐fiction nurslings, written by an educated man, and presumably read in galley by an educated proofreader, the subjunctive “have” was rendered as the past‐tense “had” no fewer than nine times. For example: “It should be so arranged that they had plenty of room.” Further, I pointed out patriotically, I had encountered this manifold lapse of civilized grammar in a public library in Canada, a dominion semantically torn between the pull of the adjacent United States and the long‐distance traditional influence of the Motherland. Was there not, then, a responsibility laid upon British publishers and printers to maintain the highest standards of proof‐reading, and so keep the well of Miltonian English pure and undefiled in their crates of literary exports?