Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Almost certainly not the author but the typesetters. Typesetters were expected to correct typos and errors as they went. (Consider that the typesetters of The Hobbit in the 1930s took it upon themselves to 'correct' all instances of dwarves to dwarfs in the first galleys!)
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Which gives me a chance to quote my favourite Tolkien story, after the typesetters also corrected his "nasturtians" to "nasturtiums".
Here's a Tolkien letter:
"..... But nasturtians is deliberate, and represents a final triumph over the high-handed printers. Jarrold’s appear to have a highly educated pedant as a chief proof-reader, and they started correcting my English without even referring to me: elfin for elvin, farther for further, try to say for try and say and so on. I was put to the trouble of proving to him his own ignorance, as well as rebuking his impertinence. So, though I do not much care, I dug my toes in about nasturtians. I have always said this. It seems to be a natural anglicization that started soon after the ‘Indian Cress’ was naturalized (from Peru, I think) in the 18th century; but it remains a minority usage. I prefer it because nasturtium is, as it were, bogusly botanical, and falsely learned. I consulted the college gardener to this effect:
‘What do you call these things, gardener?’
‘I calls them tropaeolum, sir.’
‘But, when you’re just talking to dons?’
‘I says nasturtians, sir.’
‘Not nasturtium?’
‘No, sir; that’s watercress.’
And that seems to be the fact of botanical nomenclature…"