¹ And there is yet another coming out in the September issue (83.3); more strong short submissions of this sort are certainly welcome.

² Indeed, a quick count at the six-month mark of the reporting period for 2007 (November 2006 through April 2007) suggests that the numbers are moving up again, so that last year may well have been a statistical anomaly.

³ The March issue dedicated to Peter made its appearance on time, and represents, I believe, a fitting tribute to a great man and a great linguist. I thank everyone involved in the effort to produce it.

⁴ The successful appearance of the March issue shows that this change in production has been accomplished smoothly. One small error that will be corrected in this current issue and all subsequent ones is worth mentioning because it may be a piece of Language trivia for the ages: the spine is printed upside down compared with the norm from (most—see below) previous issues, with volume and page numbers at the top and month and year at the bottom, instead of the usual reverse placement. Normally I might not mention such a gaffe (which the printers did acting on their own, thinking that it would be a service to us, inasmuch as most journals that include that information on the spine have it as on the March issue), but Geoffrey Pullum, in his ‘Topic … Comment’ column ‘Stalking the perfect journal’ (Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2.261–67, reprinted in The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax and other irreverent essays on the study of language (University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 59–66)), drew attention to a similar state of affairs in an earlier issue. He stated, in his usual gently whimsical way, that among the questions that are on the lips of ‘the broad mass of the linguistic public’ was ‘Why … the spine of Language vol. 51, no. 4 (December 1975) [was] printed upside down, i.e. from top to bottom, unlike every other issue in the last decade’ (p. 60). Although I don't know for sure what happened in December 1975, my guess (using the present to explain the past) is that a similar printer's lapse led to that anomaly.

⁵ The title page of the March issue, as indeed of this issue, makes it clear who the new associate editors are, but for the record, the Executive Committee approved adding Mark Baker, Cleo Condoravdi, Edward Gibson, D. Gary Miller, Joe Pater, and Sali Tagliamonte to the roster. This total of six new associate editors is one more than the number that rotated off as it was felt that the workload and areal distribution within the group of associate editors warranted one additional person.