The Reader's Convenience

Extract

None of the principles that should guide an editor of letters seems to me more important than considering the reader's convenience. For the most part collections of letters are consulted by people searching for particular bits of information, and the editor's duty is to make it available as easily as possible. A reader who may be unfamiliar with books mentioned frequently in the notes ought not to be confronted with cryptic acronyms like LJOP and TLOP, which force him to consult a table at the beginning of the volume or even, in a multi-volumed work, in Volume I to discover that these puzzles stand for The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems and Tristram of Lyonesse and Other Poems. For the reader's convenience it would be more considerate to use a short and easily identifiable title. Tristram fills hardly any more space than the four capitals TLOP.