Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 September 8

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September 8

Literals

Reading an old book review, I came across the following:

• It would have benefited from fewer glitches in spellings and literals, but it lacks nothing in sincerity and .... (my bolding)

Not knowing the word "literals" in this context, I looked it up. Wiktionary was no help. Neither was Wikipedia. Googling gave me this:

noun BRITISH•PRINTING

plural noun: literals

a misprint of a letter.

synonyms: misprint, error, mistake, slip, slip of the pen, printing/typographical/typesetting/keyboarding/keying/typing error, corrigendum, erratum; informaltypo, howler.

I suppose, then, that the original sentence means "... fewer glitches in spellings, and other mistakes", rather than "... fewer glitches in (spellings and literals) ...", because that would mean "... fewer glitches in (spellings and glitches in spellings)".

I guess the meaning is clear enough, if the execution is rather slipshod, which is a bit inappropriate for a critique pointing out other kinds of errors.

Anyway, my question is about this use of "literals". The reviewer just used it with an apparent assumption that his readers would recognise the word, but as I say, I've lived my life up till now without ever coming across it. Is it in widespread general use, or is it essentially printing industry jargon? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:06, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

JackofOz do you have the date of the review? The term might have been in use in a different era but that is just a guess on my part. I'm also curious what book is being reviewed. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 23:18, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

It's familiar to me (BrEng, 49). I have never worked in printing or publishing, though I do come from a family which reads dictionaries for pleasure. DuncanHill (talk) 23:39, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

It's from a review by John Bryant in The Canberra Times, 1 November 1997, of two books by a former Australian diplomat, Harold Marshall. The book in question was his memoir The Cliff ... Before and After: an autobiography of sorts. I know nothing else about the author, and nothing at all about the reviewer. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:06, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Its use is sufficiently widespread for it to be noted in the smaller OUP dictionaries of English (recently rebranded "Lexico"): here. ¶ This question doesn't strike me as relevant to an encyclopedia. Wouldn't this and similar questions be better posted at Wikt:WT:TR? -- Hoary (talk) 04:59, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

If you're trying to improve Wiktionary, sure. If you're asking a question of the refdesk, to obtain information that might be provided in Wikipedia but that the querent did not succeed in finding, then no. --Trovatore (talk) 06:05, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Note that on the Lexico page it is specifically cited as "British printing" usage. So the answer to Jack's question seems to be yes. --76.69.116.4 (talk) 06:36, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

In that case, anti-kudos to the reviewer for using a word we could not be expected to know and which even a generation later still proved elusive. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:42, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Like DuncanHill, I've never worked in printing or publishing and I am familiar with the meaning. --Viennese Waltz 09:26, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

The word has been in use with this sense in English since 1591. The OED defines it as "Of a misprint (occasionally of a scribal error): relating to or affecting a letter. " with cites up to 1999. Dbfirs 09:42, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm with you Jack, never heard of it before, but we live and learn... Alansplodge (talk) 10:09, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I doubt that many will have come across the word littoral either, but those who speak a Romance language will recognise instantly what it means. 2A00:23C5:3186:E600:F9C5:10D0:534:3EE8 (talk) 11:33, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Time for one of my occasional plugs for the 1983 edition of Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, which of course has both literal, in the sense asked about above, and littoral. It also contains the best joke about eclairs you will ever read in any dictionary. DuncanHill (talk) 11:42, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I certainly know littoral. But that's quite irrelevant to this thread. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 12:00, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

To add my tuppenceworth, I became familiar with the term 'literal(s)' before I actually moved from bookselling into editing/publishing, but probably because I already had a heightened interest in the field and was primed to take note of such things. I suspect it was fairly well known to the more bookish public in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because writers and critics were more inclined to talk about the minutiae of printing and publishing then.

The distinction between misspellings and literals was significant, because the former in a proof copy would be the fault of the writer or his/her editor (whose MS or TS the printer would have faithfully followed) and one or other of them would often be responsible for paying the printers to correct them, while the latter would be the printer's errors and would be corrected by the printers at their own expense. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.202.210.107 (talk) 14:40, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Wiktionary hereby improved. Mathglot (talk) 22:46, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that. And thanks for all contributions. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:06, 12 September 2019 (UTC)