This is usually very easily recognised. The rushes or specially requested new sections of print from the camera negative were [and still are today] joined, often simply by tape but before the 1960's by conventional splices, to put together the story of the final production by the editor. The positive prints are almost always written on [by pencil or crayon] to give special instructions to the negative cutter who will later join all the original negatives together to make the original negative element of the production.. Sometimes lengths of white spacing, with written or coded explanations for special effects, are cut into the prints. These are sometimes much longer than the final film and were not intended to indicate the real length. Cutting copies, sometimes called work prints, are often very badly scratched and marked, even torn and dirty.
Once the editing phase is complete, one has a work print, a positive copy spliced with tape or cement, the result of the editor's work that serves as the basis for cutting the negative. Usually the quality of the work print is quite bad, due both to the printing as well as to the fact that it is often scratched, dirty and torn. It can be useful in reconstructing the original editing.