ADS Website Link to Vocabula Review

[Grant Barrett]

Oy. I've been called out. And here I was hoping to stay out of this.

I'm sure I looked at the Vocabula Review site for ten minutes three
years ago, found it inoffensive, and whipped off a few lines to cover
the link. I couldn't tell you why I even bothered with a review. I'm no
Michiko Kakutani. I've looked at the VR site a few times since and have
usually felt the articles I had access to stopped about ten thousand
words short of explaining the true mission of their subtext. So, since
I added the link, I have come to concur with the general opinion on the
Vocabula Review.

My policy on adding links to the ADS site has always been haphazard. I
give them a cursory look, checking for the usual red flags of lunacy
and hackwork, and failing to find them, I carefully neglect to add the
link for months, or never do.

I see in my email archives that an ADS member alerted me to the
dubiousness of the VR link in February 2002, so I take full
responsibility for the link's presence and for any untoward
prescriptivism it might have engendered.

The ADS site has been changed.

Descriptively yours,

Grant

--
gbarrett at americandialect.org
American Dialect Society webmaster
http://www.americandialect.org/