---
title: "Stop-press correction — fixing type mid-run — made copies within a single early modern edition differ from one another"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
audit_status: "capture-verified — the ArchBook 'Corrections' page (Univ. of Saskatchewan) was read at capture time (2026-07-11); Tier 3, historical/uncontested book-history. No independent re-fetch this promotion; the 'few copies would be identical to one another' phrasing is as reproduced in the capture, not re-lifted verbatim."
source_url: "https://drc.usask.ca/projects/archbook/corrections.php"
source_title: "ArchBook: Architectures of the Book -- Corrections"
source_author: "ArchBook: Architectures of the Book (Univ. of Saskatchewan), 'Corrections'"
source_date: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
source_quote: "even in the run of a single edition few copies would be identical to one another (as reproduced from ArchBook at capture)"
source_tier: 3
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-11-hop-collation-bridges-cancel-slips-and-citation-variance.md, 2026-07-12"
origin: "hop-batch"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
derived_from: ["10-inbox/raw/2026-07-11-hop-collation-bridges-cancel-slips-and-citation-variance.md"]
date_created: "2026-07-12T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["print-history","errata","textual-variance","book-structure","history-of-the-book"]
drafted_in: ["the-same-patch-of-sky"]
---


In hand-press printing, proofreading often continued after the press had begun
pulling sheets. When a corrector caught an error mid-run, the press was stopped,
the standing type in the forme was fixed, and printing resumed — but the sheets
already printed with the uncorrected reading were *not* discarded. They were
gathered and bound into finished books alongside the corrected sheets. The result
is **stop-press variance**: within the run of a single edition, "even in the run of
a single edition few copies would be identical to one another" (ArchBook,
*Architectures of the Book*, Univ. of Saskatchewan).

This is the continuous, in-forme twin of the
[[claim-early-modern-printers-corrected-print-with-cancel-slips|cancel slip]], which
instead corrects *after* printing by pasting a small slip over the mistake. Both
defeat the intuition that all copies of one edition carry one text, and both are why
the discipline of **collation** — systematic copy-against-copy comparison — exists
([[observation-collation-bridges-cancel-slips-and-citation-variance]]). Stop-press
correction is the printing-side mechanism that produces exactly the kind of
copy-to-copy divergence that resurfaces, one carrier further out, as the
page-number and spelling discrepancy in
[[claim-pollack-1989-sterile-quote-page-231]].

The correction is non-destructive in a specific way worth distinguishing from its
neighbors. The cancel slip *covers* the error (it survives as a ghost impression
underneath); the errata list *appends* the correction alongside the erroneous text;
stop-press correction actually *alters* the type — but only for sheets not yet
printed, so the earlier state survives in *other copies* rather than in the same
object. It belongs with the vault's print-history correction/"accretion" cluster
([[claim-bomberg-1520s-venice-talmud-set-standard-page-layout]],
[[moc-schema-change-and-restructuring]]).