Frederick Howard Collins (1857-1910) was a British indexer and writer. Best known for his ''Authors' and printers' dictionary'' (1905), Collins also wrote on the philosophy of

Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest" ...

and on

subject indexing Subject indexing is the act of describing or classifying a document by index terms, keywords, or other symbols in order to indicate what different documents are ''about'', to summarize their contents or to increase findability. In other words, i ...

. Collins' dictionary is one of the earliest known sources that recommend using a

serial comma In English-language punctuation, a serial comma (also called a series comma, Oxford comma, or Harvard comma) is a comma placed immediately after the penultimate term (i.e., before the coordinating conjunction, such as ''and'' or ''or'') in a s ...

or "Oxford comma", citing a written recommendation by Herbert Spencer.

Works

* ''An epitome of the Synthetic philosophy'', London: Williams and Norgate, 1889. With a preface by Herbert Spencer. * ''The diminution of the jaw in the civilized races: an effect of disease'', London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1891 * ''Twelve charts of the tidal streams on the west coast of Scotland'', London: J.D. Potter, 1894 * 'Subject indexes: some principles which underlie them', London: Chiswick Press, 1896.Reprinted with an introduction by Michael Robertson in ''The Indexer'', Vol. 18, No. 4 (October 1993), pp.237-43
Online version
Accessed 27 January 2013. * 'Herbert Spencer', in ''Philosophers and scientists'', New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., 1899 * 'The index', in Charles T. Jacobi, ''Some notes on books and printing : a guide for authors, publishers, & others'', London: C. Whittingham & Co., 1902. * ''Author & printer: A guide for authors, editors, printers, correctors of the press, compositors and typists. With full list of abbreviations. An attempt to codify the best typographical practices of the present day'', London: Frowde, 1905. Reprinted (1909) as ''Authors' and printers' dictionary''.

References

1857 births 1910 deaths British non-fiction writers Index (publishing) Philosophy writers British male writers Male non-fiction writers {{UK-nonfiction-writer-stub