although long strings of braced arguments for a single control sequence is the accepted latex convention, i do think that using the key=value syntax (as suggested by sebastian) is preferable in a number of these situations. omission of an unneeded key is easier for the user, and omission of an obligatory key is just as easily detected. sebastian has already pointed out the absence of the author's full name. at ams we extract the front matter to be used for tables of contents and indexes. it would be very helpful to be able to identify unambiguously an author's surname -- it is now impossible to handle Brian Hamilton Kelly without manual intervention, and the proposal does not improve that situation. the actual publication information (although it would be added in production, not by the author) should be accommodated for the purpose of contents lists and indexes: year, month, volume, issue, pages, pii or similar identifier for use as an identifier for electronic publication. we also publish translation journals. for this we need the publication information for the original (possibly including the math reviews number) and translation information (translator, translation editor, possibly other notes on the translation such as "Proof of Theorem 23 added by the author after original publication"). in addition to keywords, our journals carry subject codes in accordance with the math reviews subject classification. we agree with sebastian's comment that the abstract is part of the topmatter; for one of our journals, the abstract is printed at the end. there are not enough addresses; in addition to those shown we have encountered current affiliation, temporary address, current as well as permanent e-mail address (to recognize "visiting" positions), and url information. i'm not convinced that itemization is the best way of handling the address lists, although some counting mechanism is certainly needed. this shouldn't be considered an official ams list, merely a compilation of the most obvious things that i happen to have come across. -- barbara beeton