Paul Brandon wrote (snip): > Is there a theological term for APA Publication Guide literalists? > (there are plenty of psychological characterizations that fit;-).
Two more gripes about my experience with APA style as interpreted by a copy editor. In an article I submitted to �History of Psychology� I used the past tense when referring to something written some time ago (e.g., Freud stated that�) and the present tense when referring to recent publications (e.g. John Doe states that�). When the copy-edited version came back to me *all* my present tenses had been changed to the past tense. I found this made the passages in question seem stilted (it seems more natural to me that when I�m referring to my own contemporary I should write �John Doe states that��, rather than �John Doe stated that...�) I asked that the relevant words be changed back to their original form and received a response from someone in the Production Office agreeing to this. A short time later I included with my final submission of a second article a letter explaining my use of tenses. Whether this was not passed on to the copy editor, or she ignored it, I do not know, but once again every use of the present tense in relation to the citing of recent writings was changed to the past tense. On this occasion it would have been so time consuming to check every one of these changes that I reluctantly let it pass. (My previous article had been a very short �Reply� to another article -- my 13,000 word full response had been turned down, and I was told that for a reply to a previously published article I would be allowed only 1500 words, though I did stretch that a little. But that's another story!) Has anyone else had the experience of having a copy editor changing the tenses throughout an article? I was also a bit annoyed to find that �paper� had been changed to �article� on every occasion that I used the word. This seems to me to be pedantic, since it is natural to refer to a Freud *paper*, rather than article, e.g., one would refer to �the seduction theory papers�, not �the seduction theory articles�. I leave aside that a couple of changes made by the copy editor that radically changed the sense of what I had written! Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
