MDM Reference  •  Contact the desk

Contact the Compendium Desk

The compendium desk receives questions about scope, corrections, permissions and the general use of this reference. Correspondence is read in the order in which it arrives, and a written message is usually the surest route.

Compendium Office

Send a written message

Please use the form below to send a message to the desk. Kindly state your name, an address at which a reply may reach you, a short subject, and the body of your message. A member of the desk will read the message and reply by the route you indicate.

Your name

Address for a reply

Subject

Your message

Send message to the desk

What the desk can help with

• Corrections to the text, however small.
• Questions about the scope of the reference and its editorial rules.
• Requests to quote or reproduce material from the essays.
• Reports of a broken page or a link that does not lead where it should.

What the desk cannot help with

The desk does not give guidance on any particular study, dataset or circumstance, and it cannot comment on the merits of any outside material. Questions of that kind fall outside the scope of an academic reference, and the desk will say so politely rather than attempt an answer.

Postal and spoken correspondence

A letter may be sent to the Compendium Office at the address above. A spoken enquiry may be made at the telephone number during office hours. Both routes reach the same desk, and both are recorded in the same register so that no message is lost between them.

Before you write

A few small courtesies make a reply swifter. Please state in the first line what your message concerns, so that it may be routed without delay. If your message bears on a particular essay, name the essay. If it bears on the notation, quote the symbol as it is printed rather than as you recall it, since a single altered sign can change the sense of a question.

The desk is small, and it reads every message itself rather than passing it along. That is the reason a reply may take a few days, and it is also the reason a reader may expect a considered answer rather than a form letter. A message that is written plainly will be answered plainly.

Correspondence in writing

A written message leaves a record, and the desk prefers it for anything that concerns the text itself. A correction, a quotation request or a report of a broken page is best put in writing, so that the desk may check it against the essay and fold the change in with a clear trail behind it. A spoken enquiry suits a short question of scope, and a letter suits a matter that needs a signature.

What to expect in return

A reply states what the desk can confirm and, where it cannot confirm a point, says so without evasion. If a message raises a question that the literature has not settled, the desk will name the unsettled state rather than invent an answer. A reader who is told plainly that a question is open is better served than one handed a confident guess.