Some Words

While editing the the latest issue of the law review, I have grown a new appreciation for the work of editors everywhere. I don’t work with the grammar and the text, just the formatting. It is odd how this is all divided, but while I may notice errors of grammar and fix them, mine is to find the widows and orphans in the text. What I have come to realize is that pushing even one small thing around the page, shifting the spacing within a single line, entering a soft return to break an html link where I want it, will screw everything up. Suddenly, five or six orphans spring up on the next few pages. These things quickly cascade throughout the whole document. I don’t even really know why all these orphans appear, the change I made should not have shifted lower lines, it is often in a footnote, broken off on the next line… I look around, and I can hear Word 2007 laughing at me.

This, I think, has nothing to do with law. At the same time, it has a great deal of potential application to the law.