¹ And one even had the word overtly in its title: ‘Thoughts on transitions’ (Language 81.1, March 2005).

² In particular, in my Editor's Department of March 2006 (Language 82.1.5–8, specifically p. 7) and in the ‘Request for proposals: eLanguage‘ in the same issue (p. 9), and in my annual report published that same year in the June issue {Language 82.1.466–74, specifically p. 471).

³ The current form that eLanguage is taking is described in some detail in the position paper (dated September 15, 2006) entitled ‘eLanguage: A linguistic agora’, by Stephen R. Anderson and Dieter Stein, viewable on the LSA's website (www.lsadc.org).

⁴ It is important to note that for many years, in and among the longer book reviews, Language published short reviews and even book announcements, some of which were much shorter than the typical book notice. Thus after two regular reviews in the third issue of 1926 (Language 2.3), page 197 is taken up with a 369-word review by Edgar H. Sturtevant of George William Small's The comparison of inequality: The semantics and syntax of the comparative particle in English (Johns Hopkins University, 1924), and Louis H. Gray followed (pp. 198–99) with a 180-word blurb on Nikolai Marr's Grammatika drevneliteraturnogo gruzinskogo yazyka (Leningrad, 1925). I thank Hope Dawson for bringing such items to my attention (and for offering her usual very useful suggestions on the ideas and wording contained herein).

⁵ This report was delivered at the December 1974 annual meeting of the LSA (the Golden Anniversary Meeting, held in New York City) and published in the LSA Bulletin No. 64 (March 1975), pp. 11–14.

⁶ This may be a problem without a solution, at least as far as substantial reviews are concerned, since this lag has been evident during my editorship too, partly for the reason noted and partly for other reasons (specifically, too many reviews to publish, creating a backlog).

⁷ Delivered at the December 1976 annual meeting of the LSA (in Philadelphia) and published in the LSA Bulletin No. 72 (March 1977, pp. 4–5).

⁸ I thank my editorial assistant Helena Riha for compiling these statistics for me and for very helpful and insightful discussion on the nature and purpose of book notices.

⁹ Starting with the September 2002 issue (Language 78.3), we relabeled ‘Publications Received’ as ‘Recent Publications’, since some publishers are now allowed to send just the information about books they have published (with the actual book remaining in their warehouses until a reviewer is identified).

¹⁰ Some books we have received were clearly not linguistic in nature, even if interesting and scholarly in their own right, and I assume such has always been the case. Perhaps the most unusual such book received during my editorship is the erudite collection of essays, edited by Anu Koskivirta and Sari Forsström, entitled Manslaughter, fornication and sectarianism: Norm-breaking in Finland and the Baltic area from mediaeval to modern times (published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2002), which was sent as part of a publication exchange program with the Finnish Academy that brought to our attention a number of fine linguistic works as well.

¹¹ See for instance the March 2006 letter by Stephen Levinson (‘Language in the 21st century’, Language 82.1.1–2), in which he bemoans the fact that the journal ‘spends many of its precious pages on book notices and reviews’.

¹² Indeed, one aspect of the overall review operation under my editorship that I am least happy with is the length of time that it has taken for most book notices (and reviews—see n. 6) to appear in print; notices received by us have often taken up to two years to be published, due in part to space limitations and to a desire to give priority in the pages of the journal first to research articles and then to regular reviews. To some extent, also, I fear that the book notice was too popular a feature, in that it offered free books in exchange for a relatively straightforward report of just a few hundred words on the book; the volume of notices received far exceeded our ability to process them and get them into production. The present-day delay between a book's appearance and publication of its review is of course unfortunate for the notice author but especially too for the book author, and is highly ironic since Bill Bright's concern about such a time lag in the past prompted the creation of the book notices. We expect that our eLanguage book notices operation will make for a more timely delivery of the notices.

¹³ Our thinking has always been that if book notices are to appear in Language, and if Language is the premier professional venue in linguistics that we believe it to be, then they have to be done right and presented professionally and appropriately, thus as much as possible without errors, without lapses in wording, with uniform formatting, and such. To achieve that, many editorial hands (and eyes) have been needed, so that the production process has contributed in part to the lag in publication.

¹⁴ See my September 2006 Editor's Department (The editorial process once again: Behind the scenes in the Language office', Language 82.3.482–85) for some relevant discussion.

¹⁵ I have in mind here the online version of the 20th century index and the online 21st century index available to LSA members through the LSA website (www.lsadc.org, and more specifically reachable via www.lsadc.org/info/pubs-language.cfm).