emendation

plural emendations

1. uncountableThe act of altering for the better, or correcting what is erroneous or faulty; correction; improvement.

   Then, less melodiously, dissenters of different sects issue a cantankerous emendation.

   1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC

   1 more example

   ‘Aye, aye,’ quoth she, and it will be observed that no emendation whatever is necessary to be made in these two initiative remarks, ‘Aye, aye! […]

   1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter I, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC

2. countableAlteration by editorial criticism, as of a text so as to give a better reading; removal of errors or corruptions from a document.

   The book might be improved by judicious emendations.

   3 more examples

   After some deliberation I decided to publish this journal, with only such emendations and corrections as its hasty writing in camp necessitated.

   1895, J[ohn] W[esley] Powell, “Preface”, in Canyons of the Colorado, Meadville, PA: Flood & Vincent; republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, New York: Dover, 1961, →ISBN, →OCLC, page iv

   Why, he had all the earmarks of a typewriter copyist, if you leave out the disposition to contribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and punctuation.

   1889, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, New York, N.Y.: Charles L. Webster & Company, →OCLC

   Thus he beheld her recede, and in the anguish of his heart quoted a line from a poet, with peculiar emendations of his own— God’s not in his heaven: All’s wrong with the world!

   1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter XXXVII, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC

3. countableuncountablebiologyAn intentional change in the spelling of a scientific name, which is usually not allowed.

   The genus name Uramyia is an unjustified emendation of Uramya even though it uses a better transliteration of the Greek word μυῖα.