2-1/2 or 3

Here are excerpts; the complete accusation and WORLD's complete response may be found in the article entiled "WORLD's response to Zondervan's ethics charges" in this issue. **red_square** Zondervan says the following WORLD statement is inaccurate: "Pressure for unisex language came from ... the NIV's American publisher, Zondervan, and from Hodder & Stoughton, the NIV's British publisher." The charge is wrong, according to Zondervan, because "No pressure was applied by these publishers." **green_square** WORLD's information came from sources within the Committee on Bible Translation; Zondervan would not answer repeated WORLD questions about its involvement with the other organizations. However, the June 16 issue of Christianity Today notes that Eugene Rubingh, IBS vice president for translations, "says publishers Zondervan and Hodder & Stoughton first suggested a more inclusive text to the CBT because they knew of seminary professors dropping the NIV in favor of the New Revised Standard Version...." **red_square** Here's another inaccurate WORLD statement, according to Zondervan: "Last year Zondervan published the New International Reader's Version.... It is 'inclusive,' although it isn't marketed that way, and there is no identifying statement on the cover." That charge is misleading, according to Zondervan, because it implied that "Zondervan is insidiously preying on children by forcing biblical error on an unwary public.... In our promotion of the NIrV, we did not feel it was important to call attention to the treatment of gender since it was not a distinguishing feature of the translation." **green_square** IBS has now admitted problems with the NIrV and is revising it. Zondervan president Bruce Ryskamp signed the Focus statement that says, "We agree that it was also regrettable that the New International Reader's Version ... was released with a Preface which did not explicitly notify parents that gender-related changes were made in this version." **red_square** Zondervan says that WORLD's statement about 35 percent of American Bible buyers preferring the NIV was in error, because "the NIV holds 45 percent of market share in the Christian book industry." Zondervan also states that WORLD was in error in calling the CBT the Committee for Biblical Translation rather than the Committee on Bible Translation. **green_square** The 35 percent number came from Ken Barker, secretary of CBT and spokesman for the NIV. Zondervan's own website asks, "Which Bible translations do we read?" and offers an NIV statistic of 34.4 percent from Spring Arbor Distributors. We do regret making the mistake on the CBT's name in our initial story; we have used the correct name in all subsequent articles. **red_square** Zondervan says that WORLD was wrong to state that the section of the Zondervan editorial style sheet dealing with sex-specific language is three pages long. Zondervan accuses WORLD of exaggeration, because "The actual count is 2-1/2 pages, not three; if rounding principles were correctly used, it should have been rounded to two pages, not three." **green_square** WORLD confesses to rounding up, not down. In the field of mathematics, fractions one-half and higher are rounded up; fractions below half are rounded down. In the field of common sense, a document that contains three pages-regardless of the amount of text on the third page-is commonly referred to as a three-page document. We are willing to submit this question to mediation. Full response