Angels and Pins

Medieval theologians, it is said, debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. After a week of reading page proofs, I have decided that editors are the modern-day equivalent of these learned (foolish?) folk. We talk of how to space the dots in an ellipsis and we fret about the length of a dash. We discuss semi-colons as if they were old friends. Like the scholastics, we have a deep reverence for our subject. We believe it matters. Like them, I fear, we are bound for extinction.