haplography
- noun
- /ˌhæpləˈɡræfi/
- Specialized
- Haplography, for instance, refers to the case in which the copyist, encountering the same phrase, word, or letter twice contiguously in the original, writes it only once.
Examples
-
Haplography occurs when a writer mistakenly omits a repeated letter, leading to an error in the text.
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Here, we cannot expect a single explanatory principle of the sort that might be available in the case of accidental changes such as haplography or dittography.
Academic text (2001) -
This is a nice example, since it may enable us to explain phenomena like dittography, haplography, homoeoteleuton, and homoearcton by reference to a single type of cognitive/motor mechanism instead of in the somewhat piecemeal way provided in textual criticism.
Academic text (2001) -
In this manuscript, the haplography caused the word to be incomplete, making it difficult to understand.
-
The editor noticed haplography in the document, where a crucial word was left out due to a copyist's error.
Synonyms
1
3.8
A small mistake made when writing by accident
A copying mistake where a line is left out because two lines end the same
A text that has mistakes made when someone writes it from another text
Surface Forms
Morphology
haplography = graphy (opaque) = haplo + graphy
The immediate base 'graphy' is only a partial clue, and the specialized meaning 'accidental omission of repeated material in writing' is not directly recoverable from the visible parts.
Etymology
The word haplography comes from two Greek parts: haplo- meaning 'single' and -graphy meaning 'writing'. Imagine a writer who should copy a repeated word twice but writes it only once — that 'single writing' image helps you remember that haplography is the accidental leaving out of a repeated letter, word, or sequence.