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

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Dittography

A special phase of this error is known as Dittography, where the mistake which has been left uncorrected consisted in the writing of a word twice. The word inde in Capt. 490, for example, is wrongly repeated in OJ, inde inde; the syllable te of advorte (Pseud. 277) in A, which reads advortite (cf. ch. v. § 8). Dittography is, however, not nearly so common an error in MSS. as haplography (ch. iii. § 1). The commonest case is the repetition at the end of a word of the letter that begins the following word, e.g. quissim for qui sim (quisim). A complicated example of dittography in the ancient MS. of Cicero de Republica is SECUTUTUSECUTUS for secutus (ii. 33. 57).

Dittography of a word (or letter) most naturally occurs at the end of one page and the beginning of the next. Two MSS. of the Liber Glossarum reproduce not merely the pagination of their original but also this error, in inteatro for in theatro, where the one in stands in the copies, as it did in the original, at the end of one page, and the other in at the beginning of the next (see Goetz Lib. Gl. p. 223). Dittography of a letter is also a common occurrence in the transition from one line to another, e.g. Corneliaana for Corneliana in the Leyden MS. of Nonius (188 M. 24), where the three last letters stand at the beginning of a new line.