At the risk of sounding school-marmeriish I 
should like to raise an issue that has been 
bothering me for a long time, and which reached a 
crisis point this afternoon.  This is not 
specific to the history of economics, or even to 
economic history, but is at least as relevant to 
this field as any other, and I don’t know whom to address.

The issue is the dating of citations in papers 
and books on the basis of their most recent 
publication.  As a result of this, generations of 
students undoubtedly think that Ricardo wrote The 
High Price of Bullion in 1956, and Keynes wrote 
The General Theory  in 1973, etc.  What broke my 
camel’s back today was a citation in an NBER 
paper that cited “Tacitus, Cornelius (1996). The 
Annals of Imperial Rome. New York: Penguin.”  Not 
every reader of that paper (though, of course, 
every reader of this letter) will know that this is off by some 2,000 years.

I appeal to my fellow SHOE authors to try to 
spread the practice as many, if not most, of us 
already do, of citing both original publication 
date and that of the source used by the 
writer.  The extra ink and paper involved in this 
will not significantly pollute the planet.

Please – a little pedantry is called for here.

M June Flanders