Slang a la the NYT

[Amy West]

On 10/6/14, 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system wrote:
> Date:    Sun, 5 Oct 2014 19:28:21 -0400
> From:    Ben Zimmer<bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: Slang a la the NYT
>
> Kory discussed the usage in both the comments and on Twitter when
> called out by nitpickers.
>
> http://korystamper.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/stigmatized-and-still-alive-english-in-the-time-of-aint/#comment-2890
> https://twitter.com/KoryStamper/status/512696928455237632
Kory is a bright light from what I have seen and heard of her work at 
M-W (for whom I still freelance).

I would not dismiss her or her work based on this common use.

Dave Wilton is spot on re: the editorial review: It was my senior editor 
at M-W who reviewed my letters to correspondents, pointed out my uses of 
things like "lay" for "lie" and "hopefully" that would set off 
prescriptivists, and recommended that I should avoid them lest they have 
the reaction that y'all are demonstrating here.

Yep, the lay/lie distinction is fading in the dialect. Deal with it.

(And I just yesterday gave a local organization grief for a "during the 
Mexican War in 1945" typo on a poster. [Twice on the same poster, 1945 
for 1845.] So I can be just as nitpicky as another.)

---Amy West

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