Merriam-Webster, Heal Thyself!
Lingua Franca 2018-09-05
Summary:
An email correspondent pointed out to me a striking lapse in the preface to a much-admired reference work, Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage (2002):
A number of common spelling problems are also discussed briefly. While the emphasis of this work is on usage in writing, a small number of articles is devoted to problems of pronunciation.
Mysteriously, the agreement of the main verbs in the two sentences is different: are in the first, is in the second.
What, in general, is the ...