We have, for the sake of consistency between texts, altered (and shall alter in the future) some spellings and punctuation in the novels we publish, usually following precedents from the earliest Leo Bruce novels: direct speeches, for example, use double quotation marks and quotes within those speeches use single quotation marks; “Mr.”, “Mrs.” and “Dr.” retain their stops; spaces are removed before and after long dashes; “realise”, “recognise” and “apologise” (and their permutations) are severally changed to “realize”, “recognize” and “apologize” (and their permutations); “connexion” is altered to “connection”; “’phone” is used for the shortened form of “telephone” instead of “phone”; the verb “show” is modified to “shew”; “will” is capitalised when referring to a last will and testament; and hyphens are retained (or, when absent, reinserted) in “half-past”, “week-end”, “good-bye” and “shot-gun” but are removed from “note-book”, “note-paper”, “to-day”, “to-morrow” and “to-night”. We apologize for any inconsistency which we miss (and welcome notification thereof). Whenever we have access to first editions we shall note any additional correction or alteration we make in the pertinent texts.
