Thread: ancle or ankle?
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Old 07-22-2014, 09:06 PM   #1
AlexBell
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ancle or ankle?

I'm now working on Round the Sofa by Elizabeth Gaskell. The 1859 Sampson Low edition contains the text:

'her foot had slipped upon the polished oak staircase, and her ancle had been sprained.'

I've no idea whether this was Mrs Gaskell's choice, or the publisher's or typesetter's decision.

I've more or less decided to silently change 'ancle' to 'ankle', and would be most grateful for feedback on the reasoning behind this decision.

- I don't want to leave the text unchanged - it just doesn't look right to me, and it's possible that readers may see it as an uncorrected typo.

- I don't want to mark the change with a footnote for two reasons:
-- When I first became interested in designing ebooks for the MR Library four years or so ago I looked at how others had designed their ebooks, and am certain that it was quite common for designers to write something like 'typos have been silently corrected'. I thought and still think that's a good example to follow.
-- I haven't come across any example of an author putting a footnote in a later version pointing out changes they have made. If anyone has an example of an author doing that please let me know.

What do other designers and readers think?

In case it needs to be written: I don't claim for a second that the choice I intend to make has any authority, or that anyone else should be impelled to make the same design choice. It just makes sense to me.
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