Q. I write and edit a quarterly newsletter. There was no summer issue this year, as I was out with a medical emergency. Our volumes start with the fall issue. Does the numbering of the next issue continue as if nothing happened?
A. Let's say your fall 2008 newsletter was volume 5, number 1, and winter was volume 5, number 2. If you had missed the spring issue, you could have called the summer issue “Spring–Summer 2009” and labeled it volume 5, numbers 3–4. Glossing over the missing summer issue with “Summer–Fall 2009” would get messy, however, since the two seasons are in different volumes. Better to leave a bit of mystery about what happened to summer 2009 and make your fall issue volume 6, number 1.