Penguin Cover System vs Proofreading Marks
ペンギン・ブックスの表紙 / 校正記号
Penguin Cover System comes from Publishing and Editing and Proofreading Marks from Symbol Systems. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Penguin Cover System
From the tripartite color bands of the first covers through Tschichold's composition rules to Marber's ruled grid, Penguin kept reinventing the cover as a design system. The paperback became a textbook of modern design.
Proofreading Marks
A sign language that corrects a typeset page through dialogue with its margins. The back-and-forth of deletion and stet, and the Western dele, were refined alongside the history of printing into an editing protocol that stands behind every typeset work, this dictionary included.
| Penguin Cover System | Proofreading Marks | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1935– | 16th century– |
| Family | Publishing and Editing | Symbol Systems |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Color-coded bands / Rigorous composition rules / The Marber grid / Consistency as a series | Lines pairing text and margin / Deletion and restoration exchanges / Insertion and transposition signs / The hierarchy of red |
| Best used for | Launching a book series that will hold together as the volume count grows · Sorting subjects or levels by color so a shelf reads at a glance | Handing corrections in a form any typesetter applies the same way · Sorting overlapping instructions when several people mark one proof |
| Type | One serif face fixed, size and leading unchanged across every volume | Corrections in red and queries in pencil, one color per person |
| Composition | Constant bands top and bottom with a fixed central field, only words changing | Lead lines run from the text out to the margin without crossing |
| Material | Ground colors limited to the categories, one paper stock throughout | Proofs printed at full size with margins wide enough to write in |
| Caution | Making an exception for each title breaks the premise that the system is the product and the shelf stops reading. | Corrections written as prose instead of marks leave the extent of each change open to reading, and every pass introduces fresh errors. |