Re : Laura Cerruti's notice (a bit late--the notice that is--wasn't it?) of Fishkin on Twain on NPR, especially her tag quote regarding (superidiot) proofreaders. ("In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made proof-readers." --MT 1893) 'Tis a cute e-mail tag, but a half-truth and so dead wrong. Sometime storyteller and always curmudgeon Twain did indeed verbally thrash and trash some of his "proof-readers." Rightly so. (Some proofreaders and copy editors do take ourselves much too seriously.) But Twain also praised some of them--if somewhat begrudgingly. For example: "And then there is that other thing: when you [the author] think you are reading proof, whereas [N.B.] you are merely reading your own mind; your statement of the thing is full of holes and vacancies but you don't know it, because you are filling them from your mind as you go along. Sometimes--but not often enough--the . . . proof-reader saves you--and offends you--with this cold sign in the margin: (?) and you search the passage and find that the insulter is right--it doesn't say what you thought it did: the gas-fixtures are there, but you didn't light the jets." [Copy editor's note. We will just assume the present readers understand that last antiquated figure?] --letter to Walter Bessant, 22 February 1898 Which of course is why responsible publishers insist on proofreading (and copyediting if necessary)--Yes, even a Mark Twain, and Yes, even if some overly zealous, prissily presumptuous, superidiot copy editors (not just "proofreaders," Mr. Clemens) messed with some of his prose (and not just _Huckleberry Finn_). And which--we may Sincerely Hope--explains Laura Cerruti's part-truth: she knows there's another side to Twain's estimate of "proof-readers." She assumes--we must suppose--that we also know. Forsooth! (Edmon L. Rowell, Jr.) senior editor Mercer University Press "We can't be right about everything we believe. Thank God, we don't have to be." --credo of the Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua