by Simon Petrie (writing at simonpetrie.wordpress.com)

We’ve all done it, at some point in our lives: driven a typesetter into a berserker rage; convinced an editor to disrobe down to his / her loincloth (and why editors will persist in wearing such things, one can only speculate) and to race outside and ululate at the moon, tears of confusion streaming down his / her face; motivated a proofreader to put down that red pen, and to pick up that Maxwellian silver hammer and go forth and perpetrate percussive retribution.

Oh, we probably didn’t realise it, because we were safely hundreds or thousands of kilometres away, but that’s beside the point. The point is that careless text costs lives; and you can do something to prevent this. You can clean up your act. Or, at least, your manuscript.

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