What role did 19th-century editors, proof-readers, and typesetters play in the establishment and policing of new linguistic registers and rhetorical styles during the Arabic literary renaissance (nahda)? Scholarship on this period describes the emergence of modern standard Arabic as a break with two corrosive and opposed legacies: (1) on the one hand, a tradition of flowery, ornate, convoluted post-classical prose; (2) on the other, a tradition of communicating in "sub-standard" forms of vernacular Arabic. The Arabic literary renaissance was made possible, so the traditional historiography goes, only by the elimination of post-classical frippery and uncouth solcecisms from the written language, paving the way for a modern literature. But how, precisely, did this process take place? Examining the role of “invisible technicians” like press correctors and editors at 19th-century periodicals and publishing enterprises, this paper explores the often-overlooked activity of bringing text into line with emerging journalistic and literary norms, a process inseparable from the establishment and policing of those norms. Drawing upon the work of scholars such as Hala Auji, Ami Ayalon, Marilyn Booth, Ahmed El Shamsy, and Ziad Fahmy, I consider the activity of figures such as Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Nasif and Ibrahim al-Yaziji, Eli Smith, Tannus Haddad, Antuniyyu al-Khayyat and Butrus al-Bustani in this domain, arguing against a teleological understanding of how 19th-century standard Arabic emerged from an inevitable process of correction rather than creation.