For this gathering of leaves in the 1830 edition (namely, for the 22nd signature, pages 337–352, covering Alma 41:8–46:30), the printed edition was set from 𝓟 but proofed (and thus corrected) against 𝓞. Throughout this part of the text, the printer’s manuscript, not the original manuscript, contains the compositor’s punctuation marks (covering Alma 42:6–43:29, Alma 46:3–6, and Alma 46:21–27, for about six of the 16 pages in the signature). More extensively, 𝓟 contains the compositor’s small impressions or cuts that he typically used to show where he was in his typesetting after he had filled his composing stick with 11–13 lines of type (for these marks, see the discussion on pages 17–18 of volume 2 of the critical text). There is no doubt that the 1830 edition was originally set from 𝓟 for the 22nd signature (see under Alma 43:23 for a conclusive example). But at the same time, there is also conclusive evidence that the 22nd signature for the 1830 edition was proofed against 𝓞 instead of 𝓟, a mixture of manuscript usage found nowhere else in the printing of the 1830 edition. Here I list three clear examples from the 22nd signature for this proofing against 𝓞. In each case, Oliver Cowdery made a substantial transmission error when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟, yet the 1830 edition ends up agreeing with the reading in 𝓞, not 𝓟, but without there being anything noticeably wrong with the reading in 𝓟 that could have led the compositor to consciously emend the text:
On the other hand, the preceding and subsequent 1830 signatures (the 21st and the 23rd) show no sign of proofing against 𝓞. For those adjacent signatures, whenever Oliver made unrecoverable errors when he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟, the 1830 edition retains the acceptable reading in 𝓟:
In his proofing against 𝓞 for this section of the text (from Alma 41:8 through Alma 46:30), Oliver Cowdery sometimes went further than he should have: in a few cases, he changed 𝓞 itself to make it agree with the 1830 reading! Here in Alma 42:31, we have the first example of this anachronistic emendation of 𝓞. Here the original manuscript originally read “and now my son”, and Oliver copied this phrase without alteration into 𝓟. But when the 1830 compositor set the type from 𝓟 for this phrase, he inserted the word O, giving “and now O my son”. When Oliver came to proof this 1830 signature (number 22) against 𝓞, he noticed the difference between 𝓞 and the 1830 text; but instead of having the 1830 compositor remove the intrusive word O, Oliver added the O to the original manuscript! Even more amazing, he ended up inserting the O in the wrong place, between my and Son. In other words, he ended up changing the original manuscript to read “and now my O son”, an impossible reading. Another indication of the secondary nature of the word O is the fact that Oliver’s supralinear O was written in pencil, not ink, which argues that this correction was made in the print shop (see the discussion under Alma 10:28). And if the correction was made in the print shop, this would mean that in order to proof the 22nd signature, the original manuscript (presumably the large gathering of 96 pages that contains this part of the text) was brought to the print shop after the type had already been set from the printer’s manuscript. This possible use of 𝓞 in the print shop foreshadows the use of 𝓞 later on in the print shop to set the type from Helaman 13 to the end of Mormon. Yet it is also possible that Oliver took home this 1830 proof sheet (the 22nd signature) and there proofed it against 𝓞 with pencil. Since the proof sheet would have normally been marked up with pencil in the print shop, Oliver may have used pencil at home to mark up that proof sheet and at the same time make a few minor emendations in 𝓞 with pencil.
There are three other cases where Oliver Cowdery marked up 𝓞 as he proofed the 22nd signature; in each case, Oliver used a pencil to make these emendations:
In the last case, the 1830 edition was not corrected to read either son or son’s. See under each of these three passages for further discussion.
As far as Alma 42:31 is concerned, either reading (with or without the word O ) is theoretically possible. Elsewhere in the original text there are 25 occurrences of “and now my son” (of which 21 are found here in Alma’s discourses to his three sons). But there is one example of “and now O my son”, namely, in Alma 36:3 at the beginning of Alma’s discourse to Helaman: “and now O my son Helaman / behold thou art in thy youth”. More generally, there are nine other instances of “and now O ”, as in the following types:
So in each case of “and now (O) my son”, we let the earliest textual sources determine whether the word O is there. Here in Alma 42:31, the original text clearly read without the O. It should also be noted that the 1841 British edition omitted the O here, but this seems to have been unintentional.
Summary: Remove the intrusive O inserted by the 1830 compositor near the beginning of Alma 42:31, thus restoring the original phrase “and now my son”.