There are more oddities in lexicography. The first is the weirdest and appears to be consistent across all traditional dictionary publishers: no one starts writing a dictionary in A. Ever. When I asked Steve about this—dumbfounded, because where else do you start but at the beginning?—he gave two answers. First, every dictionary—not dictionary publisher, but every book that publisher puts out—has its own style guide, and it takes definers a while to settle into that guide. Hell, sometimes it takes a few letters for the style guide to even be finished. Starting about a third of the way through
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