Grammar Girl here, I'm Mignon Fogarty, and I'm here today with Steve Klein-Edler, author

of Is English Changing, an introductory linguistics textbook.

For many years Steve was the executive editor in the reference group at Houghton Mifflin

Harcourt, where he was responsible for the American Heritage Dictionary, as well as managing

the panel's abusive juxtaperts, the dictionary pulled, and the kinds of topics we talk about

all the time on the podcast, like, is it okay to use anxious to mean eager?

And whether there's something wrong with that, ten items are less signed at the grocery

store.

Hi Steve, thanks so much for being here with me today.

Thank you Mignon, it's really a pleasure to be speaking with you.

Yeah, well I just find the work you have done fascinating, and I can't wait to hear

more about it.

Let's just start with the usage panel, the entries in the American Heritage Dictionary

that show how usage experts, what they think about common usage problems, you were in

charge of that, and I would love to hear at first how it all got started.

Great, well thank you, yeah, the usage panel has been an integral part of the American

Heritage Dictionary, from its conception up to the end of the publication of the Dictionary

in 2018.

In the 1960s, when the first edition was still being prepared, it was an interesting time

in the American publishing world, because Dictionaries were a very easy way for publishers

to make money, so a lot of publishing companies would produce their own Dictionary, and so

one of the more well-known ones, of course, was Miriam Webster, and their third edition

...