Ps?~honrurorndo~rlnologF, Vol. 8, No. 2. p. 119, 1983

Pergamon Press Ltd Printed tn Great Britain.

EDITORIAL

NEATNESS AND SPELLING COUNT

A MAINSTAY of the New Yorker magazine is its witty commentaries on misprints and

malapropisms appearing in newspapers and other magazines. In the 3 January 1983 issue of the New Yorker was the following squib, reprinted verbatim from a recent issue of The

Lancet: The International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology has established the annual Curt P. Richter prize of $1000 for the best manuscript submitted by a scientist or physician under the age of 10.

The New Yorker’s wry comment was, “neatness and spelling count.” Well, this editor, after two years on the job, has concluded that neatness and spelling do count. So do grammar, punctuation, correct arithmetic in data tabulations, and references listed in proper format and cited accurately in the text. My secretary and I have reached this conclusion jointly-she after finding inaccuracies in text versus bibliographic reference

citations in the majority of manuscripts accepted for publication, and I after editing, line by line, every accepted manuscript. (This is a time-consuming but absolutely necessary task, and one I’ve decided cannot be delegated to an editorial assistant who might

command English well but wouldn’t fully comprehend the subject matter.) Misuse of English, especially by authors who have it as their first language, occurs with disquieting

frequency. In fact, authors who aren’t primarily English-speaking generally go to some effort to polish their written English-mostly, they are not well acquainted with the

nuances of phraseology. These are “micro” issues, however, and they “come with the territory” for any editor.

There also are some “macro” editorial issues which deserve mention. These include the setting of editorial standards for manuscript acceptance, the timeliness of reviews and

publication of each journal issue, and the quality and originality of manuscript submissions. The maintenance of high standards for manuscript acceptance is our primary and major editorial responsibility. The production schedule of the journal

depends not only on us but also on the workings of a large publishing house. And the quality and originality of submitted manuscripts reflects the regard which the scientific community at large holds for the journal.

By offering our readers quality peer-reviewed scientific reports, free of the aforementioned “micro” problems, we as editors believe we are attracting more and better manuscript submissions. Our subscription numbers are increasing as well. We certainly hope this “positive feedback loop” continues for many years to come.

ROBERT T. RUBIN

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