Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation: A Study in Typography

Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation

A STUDY IN TYPOGRAPHY

Willard Johnson

Introduction by

Harry Miller Lydenberg

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Mineola, New York

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2015, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Mergenthaler Linotype Company, Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1936. [First publication: Willard Johnson, Philadelphia, 1836.]

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Johnson, Willard.

Peter Piper’s practical principles of plain and perfect pronunciation : a study in typography / Willard Johnson ; Introduction by Harry Miller Lydenberg.

pages cm

Includes index.

Originally published by Mergenthaler Linotype Company, 1936.

eISBN-13: 978-0-486-80730-0

1. English language—Pronunciation. 2. Nursery rhymes. 3. Alphabet books. 4. Tongue twisters. 5. Alphabet. I. Lydenberg, Harry Miller, 1874–1960. II. Title.

PE1137.J544 2015

421’.52—dc23

2015009128

Manufactured in the United States by RR Donnelley

80282501 2015

www.doverpublications.com

Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation

A STUDY IN TYPOGRAPHY

Designed by Bruce Rogers

Set in Linotype Cloister, with Linotype (Cleland) Decorative Material

[Original 1936 title page]

INTRODUCTION

BY

HARRY MILLER LYDENBERG

WILL YOU TELL ME, please, why we have this painless dentistry when it comes to book learning, but nowhere else?

I’m not bright enough or swift enough ever to try for a plumber’s helper or an electrician’s assistant, or get a grudging assent to a work out for even a minor league team. But I have seen the plumber’s helper getting his instruction, and I fail to recall any words or acts from the plumber except a few decisive indications of an expectant and insistent assumption that the young gentleman would be ready with the Stillson when that particular wrench was needed, would pass it on because he knew what the plumber wanted, had got this knowledge at the hands of that best of all teachers, Dame Experience, and had appreciated it when safely stowed away as a man appreciates only those things he holds dear and acquires by the sweat of his brow.

When it comes to books, however, particularly those that tell us how to read and write and learn other things in school, one of the most impressive things about them is the way they try to make this learning so sweetly alluring, simple, easy. The pill’s there all right, but the coating is thick, fascinating.

To be sure, that’s just one more way of saying that the real teacher tries to use the yeast of interest to raise and