Unabridged Quotes

“The biggest threat to lexicography wasn’t a rogue AI dictionary or even the fear that the remaining publishers would replace their harmless drudges with scary chatbots. It was the reality that John Morse had identified when I started this project: that expertise was ceasing to matter, that institutions were growing suspect, that quality was becoming elastic. The chatbot revolution was just the latest manifestation, in lexicography as in life. “People are happy with good enough,” Grant Barrett said. “And AI-based definitions are good enough.”
― Stefan Fatsis, Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary

“Dennis Baron discovered that the Mississippi state senate, citing “the exigencies of the times on account of woman’s new political freedom,” proposed three new legal pronouns in the state: hesh (“pronounced with a long e as in the word feet”), himer (“with the short sound of i on the first syllable”), and hiser (short i, the s pronounced z). The bill failed by one vote. The Sacramento Bee took action. “hir” will be the bee’s word for “he or she,” the newspaper’s editorial page declared.”
― Stefan Fatsis, Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary