Errata List

Errors are a feature not only of early printed books, but of modern printed books as well—no matter how carefully proofread, a text can still make it through the press with mistakes.

You might have noticed in the index for Studying Early Printed Books an entry for “faults escaped” along with a list of page numbers. Those are errors in the text noticed during the process of indexing the book, when it was too late to fix them. If you want to test your close-reading and early printing skills, you can see if you spot the errors listed for each page. You can also consult the errata list below and hand-correct the errors in your own copy of the book (but please, no writing in library books!).

Sometimes even the careful eye of the author and indexer can miss mistakes. If you find something that you think is wrong, please let me know! I can fix it in future printings, and I will add it to the list here, along with thanks to you.

The list below, “Faults escaped,” identifies known errors in Studying Early Printed Books, using a style commonly used in the period’s errata lists: the page number is followed by the mistake (“news sheets”) and then the correction (“newssheets”).

Faults escaped

  • page 3 for news sheets read newssheets
  • page 32 (box and text) for 6,400 read 8,000; (box) for 7,000 read 9,000 (thanks, Joey Gamble!)
  • page 36 for matrices read sorts (thanks, Glenn Fleishman!)
  • page 44 for 9 read 6
  • page 46 for long read short (thanks, Mike Widener!)
  • page 51 top diagram for 4 read 8, for 21 read 17, for A11 read A9, for 17 read 21, for A9 read A11, for 8 read 4 (that is, pages 8 and 4 are transposed, as are pages 17 and 21)
  • page 51 bottom diagram for 7 read 3, for A4 read A2, for 18 read 22, for 22 read 18, for 3 read 7, for A2 read A4 (that is, pages 7 and 3 and pages 18 and 22 are transposed)—a corrected diagram can be found here
  • page 54 for works read plays
  • page 80 for 505804 read T505804
  • page 82 for 1542 read 1552 (thanks, Jeremy Dibbell!)
  • page 82 for Bancke’s read Banckes’s
  • pages 86–88 move before prior section
  • page 93 for in in read in (thanks, Glenn Fleishman!)
  • page 95 for Aldine read the Aldine (there could be a legit difference of opinion on this one, but I’m going to go with the article; thanks, Jeremy Dibbell!)
  • page 96 for tailpieces read tail pieces
  • page 97 for to folded read to be folded (thanks, Joshua McEvilla! and lol thanks to Jeremy Dibbell for correcting my correction!)
  • page 116 for chainlines read chain lines
  • page 119 for what it read what is (thanks, Mike Widener!)
  • page 123 for nominee read nomine (thanks, Emily Dourish!)
  • page 129 for “Gg6” read “Gg6” (thanks, Kenichiro Watanabe!)
  • page 142 for 1791 read 1691
  • page 154 for 2010 read 2007–2010 (thanks, Jeremy Dibbell!)
  • page 154 for Agent of Change read an Agent of change (thanks, Jeremy Dibbell!)