The Professor with the Red Pen (or, why I'm not nostalgic for the days before e-mail submissions)
This post at John Scalzi's conjured up the Good Old Days of academic journal submissions--you know, about a decade ago--complete with the glories of snail mail and the rampant flourishes of blue pencils. Speaking as an ex-assistant to the editors in the aforementioned good old days, I have to say: e-mail submissions are so, so much easier to deal with. Granted, you still have Word Wars (2003 vs. 2007) and desperate cries of help-I-can't-get-my-article-to-attach, but in general? The editors can speed up their processing; the contributors can make and track changes with far more ease; and both sides can incorporate substantial corrections without inadvertently multiplying typos (or that's the idea, anyway). Moreover, you don't have to worry about red pens.
Red pens?
When I was editing, the University of Chicago press had two very strict rules: all changes had to be in pencil, first, and erasable, second. Obviously, the former was connected to the latter. When we sent manuscripts and proofs back to contributors, we warned them about this rule. Firmly. If the contributor dared to splash a drop of ink on the page, we had to break out the correcting fluid, because otherwise we would be in Very Big Trouble.
One afternoon, I opened up a book review, fresh back from the contributor. We made changes; the professor didn't like the changes. Oh, did the professor ever not like the changes. And this individual indicated that dislike in red pen. All. Over. The. Review. Not just in the margins, but also over some of the text.
My immediate response can be rendered as follows: WAAAAH
Now, some of you may be wondering why this should cause me to experience severe angst. If the contributor had confined the red pen to the margins, I could have cleaned up the review with copious amounts of correcting fluid. Oh, I would have been seriously annoyed, and I would probably be using words that I cannot repeat here because my parents are under the impression that I'm sweet and innocent and don't know such language, but...I could have salvaged the manuscript. But because the contributor had overwritten the text, the page was a loss--the typesetters would have nothing more to do with it. Period. Moreover, you couldn't just say, "well, delete that page from the issue length," because that would bollux all the calculations about running heads, pagination, &c. And that meant $$$. So, WAAAAH seemed like the most appropriate response.
In the end, one of the senior editors wrote a Stern Letter to the Professor with the Red Pen, and we performed an emergency swap with another book review of the same length. At most journals today, though, the editorial assistant would note all of the corrections in cute little Word balloons, the contributor would object in equally cute (if perhaps somewhat heated) little Word balloons, and they'd quickly negotiate a solution. No WAAAAH, no Stern Letters, no last-minute changes in the TOC.