EDITOR'S NOTE

Extract

The current issue of Language in Society features four articles with a single topic in common – gender and language. For this issue, I realized that by jumping one paper already in hand over a couple of others I could achieve the felicitous result of a relatively unified issue – and now that Language in Society is at five issues a year, the “jumpees” will only have to wait two months for publication in any case. My usual practice is that articles are published in strict order of acceptance – very occasionally, an author will take so long to get the very last revision – the i-dotting and t-crossing and reference-checking – done that the article will lag in publication. Extremely long articles sometimes get delayed an issue. And once or twice I have speeded up publication of an article which languished an unfairly long time in the review process.