Happy to report I missed nothing at the office despite being out last Thursday and Friday thanks to our 20° angle skating rink of a parking lot. At least this icefall was considerate enough to come when work was absolutely quiet.

I am wearing short sleeves in the office (I took off my cardigan) and not a turtleneck, a dress AND a cardigan!

Woo hoo!

Steph, I had never thought about publishing like this, so I'm finding the back and forth really interesting. Like, if the journal would never print [blah], why is that even a negotiation? And I see your post about sometimes you do negotiate, but it feels like it could just be "take it or leave it" with a lot of these changes -- like, if they want to be published in your journal, they have to use [foo], but they don't have to be published in your journal!

In a good example of publishing issues, the guidelines for illustrations at the press this book is going to have specific recommendations for production of Figures from ArcGIS. Luckily I had the sense to contact the editor at the press directly to have her translate sample illustrations into their layout program, because following the posted guidelines didn't work at all, and after round 2 of testing she finally came up with, "oh yeah, the last time we worked with this program we did [foo]," so I did that for round 3 and that worked. (Now please change the official guidelines!)

Okay, back to the Late Middle Helladic and Early Late Helladic at Tsoungiza.

Like, if the journal would never print [blah], why is that even a negotiation?

It's not a negotiation, but since the author went through and re-inserted [blah] 50 times, I really have to email the author to say "It is journal style," etc., because otherwise when they see their article online with [blah] rather than [foo] they will lose their minds. Some authors get VERY "Do you KNOW WHO I AM?!?" about shit like this.

And then some smaller stuff we let them change back because we just don't want to fight about it. (Which I don't agree with, because if we let some smaller stuff go through, then the next time we tell an author no, they'll do a search on our website and tell us triumphantly that [foo] has been used in 3 articles and therefore we demand to use [foo], too. Which has happened. They're so proud when they find those 3 exceptions out of the thousands of articles on our website.)

I really have to email the author to say "It is journal style," etc., because otherwise when they see their article online with [blah] rather than [foo] they will lose their minds.

Oh sure, but I could (in a different kind of setting) imagine that being a notification, not something that the author would write back to with further revisions. (I.e., rejecting your explicit house style.)

Heh, Steph, we have shouted pretty much the same things at authors/businesses we have edited.

And I get SO PISSED when people are all "Oh, your wife doesn't work?" Um. Not only do I battle womanfully against crippling depression and anxiety, I do my best to work as mush as possible, build my business AND while this house fooforaw has been going on, I have also spent at LEAST 3-4 per day deep cleaning, packing, moving stuff around and fielding calls, and sitting in the cold ass garage for 3-7 showings per day because agents get pissy if the owners are IN the house, yanno, LIVING and WORKING like real people, when they are showing.

So, yeah. I get you.

Ugh. The radon inspector was supposed to be here at 9, and no show. Don't they have to come IN the house? And the inspection is at noon today. It's not like I was up til 3:15 WORKING and applying for gigs or anything...

@@

I really have to email the author to say "It is journal style," etc., because otherwise when they see their article online with [blah] rather than [foo] they will lose their minds.

Oh sure, but I could (in a different kind of setting) imagine that being a notification

Well, sometimes within the article we will make a comment balloon informing that something is our style (like, if an abbreviation isn't used 5 or more times, we spell out the term -- we don't expect authors to know that, so when we delete an abbreviation we tell them why). But other times, we assume they know we're editing terminology according to our style, not just a whim. If we changed [foo] to [blah] *50 times*, then we clearly have a reason. (Of course, they believe they have a reason for keeping it as [foo], which is why I'm complaining online instead of working.)

Okay, non-work-related question:

We got a wedding invitation today that noted "Cocktail attire," which sounds swanky but not as swanky as black tie. So Tim can wear his suit, of course, but can I wear this dress (but with stockings, and without the tiara): [link] It's a June wedding, if that makes any difference. That's the most "cocktail attire" dress I have that fits properly.

I think you need the tiara.

if an abbreviation isn't used 5 or more times, we spell out the term

Ooh, I am very interested in this as a rule of thumb, but hadn't thought about it that explicitly. The number of acronyms and initialisms we use makes me CRAZY.

Not in publications, but the theatre artistic director makes all these schedules and documents, and he abbreviates EVERYTHING to the point that I can hardly read it. And he abbreviates weirdly, so he will say on X date there will be a meeting which will be attended by Dir.'s, Des. Mtr, TD, PM, PSM, SSM, AAVE, COstume Designers, Props Master, MST Electrician.

It DRIVES ME BATTY!