"Long ago I had dinner with six French copy editors. Authors, they told me, work by simple principles: never check a fact or a date, never verify a reference an

"Long ago I had dinner with six French copy editors. Authors, they told me, work by simple principles: never check a fact or a date, never verify a reference and never spell a proper name the same way twice." I was about to quote Laurence Sterne, "They order, said I, this matter better in France." But then I read "long ago", and I wouldn't bet that copy editors have hung on any better in France than in the United States. (I did not consult an index for this comment, but I did go to gutenberg.org to verify, and it turned out, correct the quotation.) I do use indexes to books--I am no scholar--chiefly when I remember that the author said such-and-such about so-and-so, and haven't the time to read through all the many pages to track the reference down.