Is there a name for this sort of typesetting error?

Cafe Society
1

Suppose a typesetter or secretary is copying from a text into a word processor, and there’s several paragraphs that refer to the same term.

Suppose half-way through in a long paragraph of the source document the word “Montana” occurs, and then “Montana” occurs again about half-way through the next paragraph.

The copyist can only remember so much at once, and so only copies the first part of the paragraph up to “Montana”, and either types or pastes that into the good copy.

Then they look back to the source document and see “Montana” in the next paragraph and mistakenly start copying the text after the second occurrence of “Montana”.

The result is that they’ve omitted the last part of the first paragraph, and the first part of the second paragraph, merging them into one paragraph in the new copy.

Is there a name for this? I think I’ve seen references to it in Shakespearean criticism, where the printer didn’t “carry” the text properly, looking back and forth between the source document and the new document.

(I came across this error today when I was looking at some old texts, and “Montana” appeared at the bottom of one page, and then midway through the first paragraph of the second page, and the typesetter for the second text obviously went from the first instance of “Montana” to the second instance on the next page, and dropped about half a dozen lines.)

2

A grievous error?

A bad proof reader?

A boo boo?

Hey, a mistake?

I tease. I’m sure there’s a correct techy term.

Maybe skip edit or jump cut.

3

I’m sure a term exists, but my Google-fu seems to be weak today.

4

On further hunting (once I hit the term “scribal error”, it helped), it looks like “haplography” might be useful, specifically what the author calls “Homeo teleuton (also homeoteleuton)”. Is this what you meant?

5

IIRC @Misnomer was a professional copy editor at one time. Perhaps they can help.

I know we have other pro copy editors, but I can’t now dredge up a name to page.

6

That’s it! I’ve never heard that phrase before, but that’s what I mean.

I wonder if there’s a more common English phrase?

Thanks!

7

“Eye skip?” (Geek Calligraphy uses that term a few times, along with “eye jump.”)

8

I was a typesetter and proofreader for 25 years. I would call it a fuck-up.

9

I’ve seen the movie equivalent. The first time I saw Jurassic Park, it was like its second day in theaters, so nobody knew how it went. The film tore right as the girl was getting shocked off of the electric fence. After some hasty repairs, the projectionist managed to get the movie going again just as we’re seeing Grant doing CPR on her, and the audience all figured that that was about right, that would have been the next scene. We didn’t know that there were a couple of jump cuts and an entire scene elsewhere that we missed.

10

Thanks for the shoutout, @LSLGuy ! Seanette and Jaycat.again covered it. :grin:

11

Sure, that’s an Espraler, a word I just made up: Scribe’s pause resumption alignment error.