Of all the things to get your knickers in a twist about...

[darkluna]

At work, I've gotten four messages in the last three days from this one author, cc'ing everyone he can think of, apparently, and yelling at us to fix "a 'critical' error" (histrionic, incorrect quotes his) in his article. What is this "critical" (sarcastic quotes mine) error, you might ask?

Per our guidelines, when I copyedited it, I changed the order of the corresponding authors' email addresses to match the order of the author list, thereby making his name second.

Yeahhh. I think the earth just wobbled on its axis.

Comments

[yendi]

Well, if he actually put the word "critical" in quotes (single or double), he can't possibly have thought anyone would assume he was serious, right? I mean, everyone knows that quotes around a word indicate sarcasm (I actually think there was a Supreme Court case dealing with this, even).

[darkluna.livejournal.com]

Ah, but he's in Japan, so I guess he thinks he's not subject to that ruling.

[sunsingergirl.livejournal.com]

You know I know nothing of the work you do, bb, but this made me lolwut?

Sometimes I wish some genius would just go ahead and invent the "smack in RL" button on a computer keyboard. :|

And I totally loled at my own typo.♥

[darkluna.livejournal.com]

I would use that button so much, the type would wear off it within a week. XD

I get that the order of author names is important for scholarly articles, but I have never seen anyone freak out over it this badly. And it's not even the official list of authors for the paper! It's just the email addresses.

[sunsingergirl.livejournal.com]

I could see this, haha.

And he's just stupid, I guess or anal retentive, but that's another story.