he terminology of cyberspace, undistinguished by more than a distant hint of linguistic nicety, will represent for some geographers a distinct challenge. Of course, in numerous minor ways geography's quantitative revolution offered its own share of vocabulary lessons: Most of the words-and symbols-were unabashedly lifted from statistics textbooks, topological discourse, or probability theory. There can be no doubt that academic geography has generated neologisms sufficient to lash Noah Webster to the tracks before the runaway onslaught of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine-the original mechanical (steam-driven) calculator. But when it comes to jargon cyberspace stands in a class by itself: The trendiest current or the most historically arcane variants of the geographer's patois cannot compare. And to have such linguistic innovation and imperialism foisted on an unsuspecting public amounts to a novel lexical challenge for modern times. Much language of the cyberrealm is resolutely technical in origin. It has slipped with minimal warning from the inner sancta of the coder and hacker into the starched-collar realms of the Times-New York, Financial, and Sunday-and the Economist of London, and it serves even to confound the robust Chicago Manual of Style. In fact, Eric S. Raymond's The New Hacker's Dictionary (1996) and, especially, Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age (1996) became mandatory companions in the assembly and production of articles on the geography of cyberspace in this special issue of the Geographical Review; Wired Style, a product of the distinctive Wired magazine editorial staff, must rank atop current guides. But let it be said: In the production process more than a few rules have been posited, revised, restored, rejected, and resurrected-evocation enough ofT. S. Eliot's "time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse" (Eliot 1963, 4).