"Blue pencils were traditionally used by editors of books and newspapers to mark up copy for printers, as the colour did not show up in early reprographic processes.
Blue pencils were not only used to censor plays; they were also used to censor letters sent home by British troops in World War One and World War Two. Blue pencil was so commonly associated with the practice of redaction that it has become a metaphor for censorship."
You'll forgive me if I missed your allusion to the latter paragraph, being up to my eyeballs in the former.
BTW, when I spoke of "camera-ready art", that's not pictures per se, but entire pages of both print and inserted photos in their final form before printing, the "galley proof". Very few do camera-ready art any more what with computer art such as "Quark" and "InDesign".
Great care must be taken today for, with the relative ease that computer art programs impart on the final layout process, there comes a much higher likelihood of error in the layout process. Its the most dangerous part of the modern publication process by far.
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