Often, contracted words lack an apostrophe, two words are printed as one, and elipses and hyphens are used inconsistently. Words may have multiple spelling variations; all variations were retained as printed. Dialect, obsolete words, alternative spellings and misspelled words were not corrected.
Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside down, or partially printed letters and punctuation, were corrected. Unprinted final stops and quotation marks were added. By John Dos Passos. T hree gulls wheel above the broken boxes, orangerinds, spoiled cabbage heads that heave between the splintered plank walls, the green waves spume under the round bow as the ferry, skidding on the tide, crashes, gulps the broken water, slides, settles slowly into the slip.
Handwinches whirl with jingle of chains. Gates fold upwards, feet step out across the crack, men and women press through the manuresmelling wooden tunnel of the ferryhouse, crushed and jostling like apples fed down a chute into a press. As she set her basket down she glanced into it with pursed-up lips.
The newborn baby squirmed in the cottonwool feebly like a knot of earthworms. On the ferry there was an old man playing the violin. Bud Korpenning sat on the rail watching him, his back to the river.
The breeze made the hair stir round the tight line of his cap and dried the sweat on his temples. His feet were blistered, he was leadentired, but when the ferry moved out of the slip, bucking the little slapping scalloped waves of the river he felt something warm and tingling shoot suddenly through all his veins.
