The Magazine Style-Code

A crab, one band of amateur scientists declares, is “a small, red fish that walks backward.” Leigh H. Irvine sees the same reckless confidence in writers who expect printers to make every page right.

In the busy printing houses of the early twentieth century, rush jobs and careless manuscripts leave punctuation, spelling, and typography to chance—and the printer gets blamed when errors reach the public. Irvine, drawing on the methods of Theodore Low De Vinne and other authorities, argues that writers, editors, proofreaders, and compositors need a shared code: clear rules can save time and money, though no system can banish every mistake. His sharp, practical handbook takes on the small inconsistencies that can muddy a page and sour a publisher’s reputation. Which rules can keep the next blunder out of cold type?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.