McPhee has included the following text in the publishing contract for each of his books since 1994. He says it applies to all his work.
It is my wish that future editors respect my thoughts about various matters like inches versus centimetres and miles versus kilometres and the choice in which altitude is expressed and personal habits of punctuation and so forth. In the case of the units of measure, I have used both (but mainly the English system) because we are living in a time of transition, and, in the United States at the moment, both apply. Sometimes, to express that fact indirectly—and for rhythm, and for other considerations—I have used metric measurements in one part of a sentence and English measurements in another. But never do I say something like “seventeen miles (27.359 kilometres)” because that is oafish, and I hope and pray that no sentence of mine is ever “improved” in such manner by a well-meaning editor who doctors my texts so that the two forms of measurement are presented in linear translation. Equally, I would spin in my grave if such an editor were to change an English measurement to a metric measurement, ruining whatever flow and rhythm the sentence in its original form managed to achieve. If something is in inches, feet, miles, leave it just as is, even after the entire country has embraced the metric system and miles have gone the way of leagues and rods. In general, please follow to the letter—and to the last absent or present punctuation mark—the Farrar, Straus & Giroux editions of my books. If you do, you will not dismantle various idiosyncrasies of style and punctuation that I chose to employ or create. If a comma is not there, please do not insert it. If commas are not there in adjectival strings, it was my intention that commas not be there. If you come upon an exxecutive, preserve him. He worked for Exxon. If, in “In Suspect Terrain,” you come upon the words “new and far between,” the words I intended were “new and far between.” If William Penn’s daughter wants a “rod and real,” stet “real.” If someone is “called to an office and chewed,” do not add “out.” In that instance, I preferred to leave it out. If a rule is probed, as in “the exception that probes the rule,” stet “probes.” If something is described as “avalanchine,” I did not intend to say “avalanching.” If the text says “porpentine,” please do not change it to “porcupine.” Where “The Founding Fish” refers to Reds Grange, Reds plural is what I meant. In “La Place de la Concorde Suisse,” foreign words are not italicized—and are not to be italicized. The same applies to “Tabula Rasa.” In the title piece of “Giving Good Weight,” the rationale with respect to italics was more complex. Please carefully follow the original text in FSG editions. In “Annals of the Former World” and its component books, if updating is done in the light of advances in scientific research please cover such matters in footnotes. Please also handle in footnotes and not in textual alterations anything to do with money, including but not limited to pounds, guineas, shillings, halfpennies, farthings, francs, pesetas, lire, dollars, Deutschmarks, yen, and euros. Titles are never to be altered. And please never title a collection of my work “The Best of . . . .” Such titles are false in nature and demean work that is not included. In my various books, photographs, drawings, charts, maps, and the like have been used sparingly or not at all. That was intentional. I wanted the pictures to be done in words. I don’t mean to lay down a rigid guideline here, but please consider respectfully the editions of my lifetime and use them generally as models. They are fairly but not wholly consistent. For example, more than two dozen maps were made specifically for “Annals of the Former World” by Raven Maps & Images, of Medford, Oregon. In “The Ransom of Russian Art,” the reproductions of dissidents’ paintings are integral components of the book and their locations within it are not random. Notes underlying this literary will and other items that may have occurred to me after this date are in my computer in a Kedit file called Litwill.FSG. My books have been proofread with exceptional care by proofreaders at FSG, by proofreaders at The New Yorker magazine, by myself, and by others. In more than a million words, there are probably fewer than ten typographical errors. Please do not fix one unless textual evidence allows you to be absolutely positive that you have found one of those ten. I warmly thank you for your attention to these words.
