"Best by..."

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Why is this "idiotic"? It seems to me to be a totally understandable 
telegraphic reduction of "Best [if used] by August 12[, ]2009."

(by the way, the brackets here are used in a perfectly normal way to indicate 
NON-phonetic interpolations)

In a message dated 7/4/08 12:49:00 PM, wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM writes:


> I mentioned this a few years ago as an idiotic variant of "Best before..." 
> stamped on grocery products.
>  
> Now I've seen it again on Hunt's Snack Pack Pudding: "Best by Aug122009."
>  
> JL
> 




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