Would that be okay? I mean, electric starters were a popular addition to the Model T, and they still are. (Something something avoiding broken hand, wrist and arm something.)
But while there are three pedals on the floorboards of the Model T, none of them are the throttle. Any writer who did his or her homework should know this.
Looking farther back into history, there's something even more ubiquitous than Mr. Ford's Tin Lizzie: the "long s," as in the heading of the original, official-record version of the Bill of Rights, "The Congre∫s of the United States...."
That funny-looking penultimate letter in "Congre∫s" isn't an "f," it's a "long s" as distinguished from a "short" or "round s" and there were distinct rules for using it. Using the wrong version in the wrong place would have struck the eye of a literate person of the time as jarringly off. Unlike an "f," a long s either lacks a crossbar or has only the left half of one. (Printers in the United States, a forward-looking place, were among the first to drop it and how futuristic that must have seemed, right up there with Mr. Webster's spelling reform.)
An historian should know this. Yet I read, just past the title page of a scholarly work about the events and politics of the the early U.S. that produced the Alien and Sedition Act and ultimately tested and strengthened the robust protections for freedom of the press, this notice:
"To avoid a needless distraction for contemporary readers, I have removed the eighteenth-century convention of using "f" for "s" when quoting from period publications...."
They did what? The hell they did!
Okay, the long s is a di∫traction. We're not used to it anymore. Take it out. But for pity's sake, take it out in the full knowledge of what it is!
It's not too much to ask.
Other than that, the book is engrossing reading and the writer appears to have gotten the historical facts right. It's just typography that trips him up, as far as I can determine. I'll have a book report about it by and by.
I once picked up a book of naval history, and put it down half a chapter later when I discovered that a ship was described as tacting and not tacking.
ReplyDeleteAnd there was the art historian who referred to the Castel Sant'Angelo as the setting for the last act of Verdi's Tosca. They did correct that in the paperback edition.
1. I wonder if it's any way related to the eszett/scharfes S of German - which is more rarely used than it once was, mostly now only for a double-s at the end of words.
ReplyDelete2. I remember some book - maybe one of MFK Fisher's - where she referred to a long-s used in an old description/recipe for "suckling pig" causing a certain degree of hilarity among more-modern readers of the recipe.
Fillyjonk, eszett is essentially a ligature of a long s and a fraktur z -- or a Roman cursive s.
ReplyDeleteI came here to streẞ this point, but my work here is done...
ReplyDeleteActually, some Model Ts had a foot-operated throttle. My Uncle had one years ago, I think it was a 1921 model, and IIRC, it had a foot throttle. I got to drive it for a bit, interesting operating procedures. Like stand on all 3 pedals for an emergency stop.
ReplyDelete