STATE 05 · REFERENCE

Contact the editorial desk

Corrections, questions and suggestions are all welcome.

Before you write

The editorial desk reads every message that reaches it. To receive a useful reply, please make the subject of your note as precise as you can. If you believe a statement on these pages is mistaken, quote the page and the sentence, and sketch the reason for your objection. A short, exact note is far more helpful than a long, general one, and it can be verified far more quickly.

If your question concerns a term, the glossary is often the fastest route to an answer. If it concerns the scope of the reference, the editorial desk page explains what the reference covers and what it does not. Reading those two pages first saves both you and the desk a round of correspondence.

What the desk cannot do

The desk cannot give advice on any particular study or setting, cannot review drafts, and cannot supply data or formulae for a specific purpose. The reference is a theoretical text, and its scope ends where a specific setting begins. Messages that ask for such assistance are answered politely, but they are declined.

The desk also cannot accept attachments, and it does not keep a mailing list. Correspondence is treated as a private correspondence between the writer and the desk, and it is not passed to any third party.

Postal address and telephone

If you prefer to write by post, please address your letter to the editorial office. The desk answers postal mail more slowly than electronic mail, and it cannot promise a reply to a letter that arrives without a return address.

Stochastic Series Lab — Editorial Office
640 Memorial Drive, Suite 210, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
Electronic mail: contact@stochastic-series-lab.org
Telephone: +1 (617) 555-0188

Send a message

Please complete the short form below. The fields marked as required are needed so that the desk can reply; the organisation field may be left blank. When you submit the form you will be taken to a confirmation page, and your message will be read by the desk in the usual order of arrival.

This form navigates to a confirmation page on this site and does not transmit your details to any other destination.

Response times

The desk is small and reads correspondence in batches rather than continuously, so a reply may take several days. Notes that quote a page, a heading and a sentence are handled first, because they can be checked against the text without a search. Notes that ask a broad question about the subject are still read, but they often receive a shorter answer, since a full reply would amount to a second essay.

If a week passes without a reply, it is usually safe to write again. Messages are occasionally misplaced when a great deal arrives at once, and a brief reminder quoting the subject line is a kindness rather than a nuisance. The desk would rather receive a friendly second note than leave a genuine correction unexamined.

Language of correspondence

The reference is written in English, and correspondence is answered in English. A message written in another language is still read, and the desk will reply in English even where the original was in another tongue, because the desk cannot promise accuracy in a language it does not use daily. A short message in plain English is therefore the surest route to a clear reply.