W. M. Lindsay, An Introduction to Latin Textual Emendation

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Causeless omission of a word

Where the omission of a word is not due to a blot on the page or a hole in the leaf of the archetype, the omitted word may in the great majority of cases be supposed to be either (1) a word similar to a neighbouring word or identical with it, as in the instances quoted above (<magis> magis, male <malus>), or (2) an unusual form, such as a Greek word, or (3) a small word unimportant to the sense of the sentence, as in <ego> meam operam perdidi. But we must not forget that a word is often omitted from no other apparent cause than the carelessness of the scribe. The omission of juris in the original of CD in Poen. 586: “hódie juris cóctiores nón sunt, qui lités creant”, does not come under any of the classes which have been mentioned, and is probably a quite inexcusable piece of negligence on the part of the writer. So in a passage of Nonius (21. 18) the scribe of the Laurentian MS. has passed over the word genus, though it is written plainly in his original, the Leyden MS.