Proposal: A separate antedatings list

Benjamin Zimmer bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU
Mon Nov 5 18:35:04 UTC 2007


On 11/5/07, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> On Nov 5, 2007, at 9:01 AM, David Bowie wrote:
>
> > ... Part of the issue may also be that not everyone is aware of other
> > resources. For example, this was the first i'd heard that there's a
> > separate eggcorns list.
>
> i have posted links to the ecdb many times on this list (usually to
> point out that some item's already there, but sometimes to say that
> it will go there, and sometimes to confess that i don't know quite
> what to say about it), and so has ben zimmer.

Something we haven't posted very often, however, is the link to the
associated Eggcorn Forum:

http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/

If people feel that ADS-L has become overladen with eggcorn posts,
this presumably is where they could go instead. I have to admit that I
only occasionally peek into the forum, so I'm much more likely to pick
up on a freshly observed eggcorn here than there. There are also other
forums for reporting eggcorns, such as the Usenet newsgroups
alt.usage.english and soc.motss (the latter frequented by Arnold), but
I wouldn't want to bar eggcorns from ADS-L simply because other venues
are available. It would be helpful, however, if the subject line for
such posts were more informative than simply "Eggcorn?" -- something
like "Eggcorn: X -> Y" would be better.


--Ben Zimmer

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