Dear Bill,

Alone among major scientific journals, IUCr publications (Acta Crystallographica) continue to produce offprints "exactly as printed in the journal" - offprints that are a disgrace to Munksgaard International Publishers and to the Union. There is no need to spell out the inconvenience and ugliness of offprints that contain excerpts of the preceding and following articles. It is true that the offprint order form offers the possibility of additional offprints free from such extraneous material, but "the process is very costly" and, in any case the offer does not apply to the 25 free offprints to which authors are entitled (the only ones which many of us can afford). Of the several journals in which I have published papers, only Acta Crystallographica provides such shabby offprints. I am sure that many other readers of the Newsletter share my feelings in this matter. It is time for the Union to take the matter up.

Jack Dunitz