Word for Word [antikvár]

Introduction Physically, an author makes only three kinds of alterations: he substitutes, he deletes and he inserts. But when the intention behind each change is taken into account we find a much wider range of groups and sub-divisions. One of the largest groups is that consisting of the tidying-up changes that every author makes: correcting mis-spelt words and grammatical lapses; refining punctuation; recasting awkward constructions; removing redundancies, clichés and unwanted repetitions; and suppressing jingles,1 unintentional puns and the sort of double entendre that at best could disrupt the mood of a passage and at worst damage the author's moral reputation. Then there are the more specialized but still menial changes that are dictated by the medium a writer happens to be working in. The poet's minor readjustments to rhythm and metre, or his attempts to improve his rhymes, would come into this category. So would the dramatist's changes made in relation to certain elements of the theatre-situation—the settling-in of the audience after an interval, say, which might require a rather longer period of 'freewheeling' on the stage than 1 As, for example, George Eliot had to do when, in Middle-march, she found she had written: '"What is it, dear?" said Dorothea, with dread in her head.' 7