passages in abridged works are often left intact, editors may remove "repetition, rhetoric and redundancy" from a complete work.

Until roughly the mid-19th century, the act of abridgment was widely regarded as fair use and was among the most frequently abused loopholes in British and American copyright law. However, by the 1870s, international outcry from authors and publishers alike prompted legislatures to consider revisions to end the "very unreasonable" principle. Today, abridgments are considered