Bear in mind that prior to desktop publishing tools (which arrived circa 1986-88) laying out a magazine/large format book like WER was a time-consuming and labour intensive job; typesetting was a photographic process using a phototypesetter to etch the printing plates at best (digital phototypesetting was around but very bleeding-edge), and printing was also a mechanical process. Even with a streamlined workflow, allocating an entire month to the production process would make it a tight fit. Then add another month for distribution around the US (most likely via railfreight to intermediate wholesale warehouses before bundles were shipped out to bookstores). Finally note that the date on the cover of a periodical is when the store clerks take the item off sale and strip the covers to return them as evidence of destruction in return for credit (any sold -- no covers provided -- copies must then be paid for, to the wholesaler and ultimately the publisher).
If that sounds like a stone-age process ... well, it's the way publishing used to be done: it predates computerization and containerization by some decades, and it was only beginning to change in the 1980s.
To make matters worse, the writing/editing process would be mediated entirely by sending drafts back and forth via the mail, so you can reasonably add a couple of weeks to the process of writing and then approving a draft compared to what it would take today.
Upshot: this issue was probably finalized 3-4 months before the date on the cover. Microsoft Word was quite possibly not available to reviewers in time to make it into the magazine.
(Source: I used to write software reviews for Computer Shopper -- the British version of the title, not the same as the US one -- in the late 80s to early 90s. Smaller country, different tech by then, but it was still a tedious back-and-forth with printed drafts in envelopes with stamps on them (and sometimes floppy disks!).)
We had a "reprographics" shop in high school. Printing presses, etching plates, literal cut-n-paste of pieces of paper to do layout.
One day a few of us cut two classes in a row to finish a layout (so three class periods total including the repro class) and by lunchtime we were all acting really silly and laughing too much. We eventually figured out that we had been leaning over the layout table pasting so long that we had accidentally "huffed" the glue fumes!
This was my experience working as reporter on a rural weekly in the late 1970s. We had a photo typesetter than produced column-width copy, screen-printed photos, used clip-art for ads, then laid it all out on paper the size of the printed page with and photographed the pages on a process camera to go for printing.
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We shared our office with an old-school print shot with a genuine Linotype hot-metal typesetting machine, so in addition to the constant sound of my manual Olympia typewriter, my days were filled with the regular klunk of freshly-cast slugs dropping from the machine.
If that sounds like a stone-age process ... well, it's the way publishing used to be done: it predates computerization and containerization by some decades, and it was only beginning to change in the 1980s.
To make matters worse, the writing/editing process would be mediated entirely by sending drafts back and forth via the mail, so you can reasonably add a couple of weeks to the process of writing and then approving a draft compared to what it would take today.
Upshot: this issue was probably finalized 3-4 months before the date on the cover. Microsoft Word was quite possibly not available to reviewers in time to make it into the magazine.
(Source: I used to write software reviews for Computer Shopper -- the British version of the title, not the same as the US one -- in the late 80s to early 90s. Smaller country, different tech by then, but it was still a tedious back-and-forth with printed drafts in envelopes with stamps on them (and sometimes floppy disks!).)