Cover date: Difference between revisions

In the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, the standard practice is to display on magazine covers a date which is some weeks or months in the future from the publishing or release date. There are two reasons for this discrepancy: first, to allow magazines to continue appearing "current" to [[consumer]]s even after they have been on sale for some time (since not all magazines will be sold immediately), and second, to inform newsstands when an unsold magazine can be removed from the stands and returned to the [[Publishing|publishing company]] or be destroyed (in this case, the cover date is also the '''pull date''').<ref>{{cite web|author=Cecil Adams |url=http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/780/why-are-magazines-dated-ahead-of-the-time-they-actually-appear |title=Why are magazines dated ahead of the time they actually appear? |publisher=The Straight Dope |date=1990-06-22 |access-date=2013-06-28}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Head |first=Will |date=June 2000 |title=Letters |work=[[Personal Computer World]] |pages=67 |volume=23 |issue=6}}</ref>

 

 

In other countries, the cover date usually matches more closely the date of publication, and may indeed be identical where weekly magazines are concerned.