An (ahem) good-natured addressing of a rather annoying problem that has been troubling us all of late. No offense meant to the people responsible.

"Of all the –"

SLAM!

"Watson, what in heaven's name!"

I glared at Sherlock Holmes with a baleful look, daring him to challenge me. He briefly glanced up from the malodorous concoction he was mixing at his chemical table to meet my furious gaze before rolling his eyes infuriatingly and returning to the experiment.

"Must you fling that infernal magazine round like that, Watson?"

"Yes, I must! I am thoroughly and completely frustrated!"

"About what, pray?" Holmes asked boredly, not looking up from his work.

"That blasted printer at the Strand!"

"Oh, the one that spelled Lama with two L's in Empty House?"

I stared at him.

"Oh, so you do read them."

"Only to find egregious errors such as that."

"Well I surely didn't spell it like that!"

"You need to find a new publisher then. By the way, I am not even sure that I know if you were wounded in the leg or the shoulder – which was it?"

"Oh, do stop it. It isn't my fault the typesetter is a dolt."

"If you would not persist in writing up those florid memoirs you would not have to worry about it, you know."

"Those florid memoirs paid for our trip to Brighton last month, my dear Holmes – it is not as if that ten guinea fee from that insufferable clerk in your last case was able to do so!"

"Oh, for the love of heaven. What are you so up in arms about this time anyway?" he asked in exasperation, pouring a beaker full of bright blue liquid into a flask.

I brandished the magazine I had flung across the room in my frustration, shoving it between his nose and the experiment. He peered at it before shoving it away.

"Other than the fact that that Paget chap makes me look like a walking broomstick, what is the matter with the story?"

"What is the matter with it? What is the matter with it!"

"Yes, I believe that is what I asked," he replied dryly, going back to his beakers.

"The matter with it is, Holmes, that the scene changes in my story were clearly marked in longhand with dark horizontal lines when I sent it to the editor. Now, now there are no lines whatsoever to be seen anywhere in the story! My scenes are all squashed together as if they were continuous!"

Holmes stared blankly at me.

"That is an unpardonable sin in writing, Holmes. If you are skipping time or location, you have to either put in a descriptive paragraph or a line indicating a scene break. My lines are all gone!"

Holmes continued to look blankly at me.

"This is a major issue to you?"

"A major issue! Of course it's a major issue!" I fumed, tossing the offending magazine into the corner and stalking to my writing desk.

"Can you not complain to the editor or someone?"

"I have been – about the last two issues that it happened in. They refuse to respond to my messages!"

"Well, you know it is a fairly easy problem to solve," Holmes replied calmly, going back to his experiment with a clink of glass test tubes.

"Eh? How so?"

"Stop writing romantic rubbish and you will not have to worry about it."

I snorted.

"I rather think I am going to use this for my own advantage, Holmes," I said with a sly smile.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I am going to write up this little conversation and sell it to a rival publishing company. A puzzle that even Sherlock Holmes could not come up with a solution to. 'The Case of the Disappearing Lines', eh?"

SMASH!

"Watch those test tubes, it's not a good idea to drop them like that."