Edition vs Issue
Edition and issue are words that are commonly associated with newspapers, newsletters, magazines, books and journals. There are many who use the terms interchangeably thinking them to be synonymous. However, there are differences between the two terms that will be highlighted in this article, to enable readers to use the correct term in a particular context.
Edition
Edition is a word that is used in print media, to indicate to the number of books or magazines printed at a particular time. We talk about December edition of a magazine as well as 2009 edition of a text book to refer to the limited number of copies produced at a time.
There is also a trend to refer to the copies of the magazine published in a particular country as the edition of that country. For example, Readers Digest and Time are international magazines with their Asian editions being a little different from the editions published for Europe or Americas. Magazines also publish special editions every now and then to celebrate and commemorate events and personalities. We also find collectors editions of magazines on select topics of interest for the readers.
版也是一个词用来表示形式f the content such as print edition or electronic edition.
Issue
Issue is the serial number of a publication in a particular year. This allows a magazine that is a monthly publication to have 12 issues in a year rather than continue to pile on the number with the passage of years. This is a system that lets a publishing house to have limited issues rather than confuse a reader with a huge number that he cannot even remember. Thus, all a reader needs to do to get the copy he is looking for is to ask for the 6th issue in given year. For a newspaper, the cycle begins on the first day of a year. This means it can have 365 issues in a year and then begin again with one.
What is the difference between Edition and Issue?
• Edition refers to the limited number of copies of a book or a novel published in a particular year. It is also used to refer to the form such as print edition or electronic edition. Magazines publish special editions or collectors editions to mark anniversaries and events or to cover personalities. In the case of text books, edition indicates the year in which the book was published.
• On the other hand, Issue is a word that is mostly used in the case of print media to indicate the month of the year in which it was published. Thus, we have September issue of a magazine, and a newspaper has 365 issues in a year.
• However, there is a trend to use the words interchangeably these days to refer an edition or an issue, and it has become acceptable in case of a publication to be labeled as an edition or an issue.
Just because there is a trend for something, does that make it right or acceptable? My understanding is that an EDITION is where the content is substantially the same, hence a 1st or 2nd edition, or indeed a print or electronic edition. These are all different editions of substantially the same material (therefore used for a book). A periodical publication such as a newspaper or magazine, however, is published in ISSUES, wherein the content of each is completely different. In my view, the only time it is correct to refer to an edition of a newspaper is where you have, for example, an early edition or a late edition of the same issue [same date] (i.e. the content is substantially the same but perhaps with a different front page)
Great response, Rosalind. I agree with you. I think Magazines have issues and may release a special edition a couple of times a year on a specific topic. I’m so glad this post was written because I was getting confused as whether to label my new magazine’s issues as issues or editions because I have seen it done both ways.
Great article! Just the question I had since I’m about to release a new magazine in April.