Stemmatology

Saut du même au même

An omission may occur because the copyist unintentionally skips a passage and thus creates an omission. If this happens because similar words or phrases appear twice on the same page, inducing the copyist to unintentionally skip the passage between the first and the second of these phrases, i.e. to ‘jump’ from the one to the other, this is called a saut du même au même (literally 'jump from the same to the same' in French) or an eye-skip.

The scholarly Greek term for words which have the same letters in the beginning is homoeoarcton, ‘similar beginning’. Similarly, the scholarly term for words that have the same letters at the end is homoeoteleuton, ‘similar end’. Both homoeoarcton and homoeoteleuton may induce a saut du même au même.

References

– Havet, Louis. 1911. Manuel de critique verbale appliquée aux textes latins. Paris: Hachette.
– Reynolds, Leighton Durham, and Nigel G. Wilson. 1974. Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. || See pp. 204–205.
– West, Martin L. 1973. Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique Applicable to Greek and Latin Texts. Stuttgart: Teubner. || See p. 24.

In other languages

The French expression is most often used. Besides are in use:

EN: eye-skip
GE: Augensprung
IT: salto da pari a pari, omissione ex homoeoteleuto

GH