Slashdot Mirror
Authors Alarmed As Oxford Junior Dictionary Drops Nature Words
Freshly Exhumed writes: Margaret Atwood, Andrew Motion, and Michael Morpurgo are among 28 authors criticizing Oxford University Press's decision to scrap a number of words associated with nature from its junior dictionary. In an open letter (PDF) released on Monday, the acclaimed writers said they are "profoundly alarmed" and urged the publisher to reinstate words cut since 2007 in the next edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Among words to be dropped are acorn, blackberries, and minnows.
Well, yes, but as your own link explains:
The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a word or expression that has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date.
So it's less that they chose those words and more that we, as English speakers, chose them.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The Oxford Junior Dictionary contains about 3% of the Oxford English Dictionary. Some words need to be swapped out to make room for words that are more relevant to the users.
The OJD is now given to every child in the UK primary school system (equivalent of the US elementary school) to ensure those with parents that aren't bothered or too poor have the single book that's of great use when doing homework. Perhaps you need a dose of reality, not every kid has the internet at home. What you did at school is irrelevant, this is today, not you fagging behind the bikeshed yesterday.
So yes, damn straight it's a big deal that the singular reference all kids have is getting hacked back and dumbed down. I hope the UK education system replies in kind and dumps Oxford Press with a "thanks, but now fuck off" message.
No, originally it was only cut and paste. Because once upon a time that was how you did large scale re-editing. You had a pair of scissors, a pot of paste, and you cut out passages and pasted them where you wanted them to be.