okay so at work we have one particular family of editors who work in quite a famous chemistry series. my boss had a meeting with them, where they gave feedback on how they thought things were going. now they're known for their attention to detail, but i never thought it could be THAT bad. here is the highlight of the 6 hours of meeting notes:

2. Lessons from production of Volumes 1, 2 and 3

The following points should make the production process for Volume 4 easier, give better service to the reader,and should use the page budget in a more efficient way.

· Helmut found that Volume 1 had an average of 78.3 characters per line, Volume 2 [with another typesetter] an average of 72.3 and Volume 3 an average of 76.5. This creates, on books of this size, quite a difference in the number of pages. He suggests that we should aim for an average of 80 characters. – If Volume 2 would have been typeset like Volume 1, it would consist of 648 pages instead of the 702 pages it has now.