Don't assume the rip-off volumes are just those 99 cent soft cover volumes. There has always been a flood of fat unabridged volumes that can just as lousy as the rip-offs that come in small packages. But they all have the same basic low-quality and they throw in the name of Webster for good measure. In my next column I'll have more on good dictionaries and bad one. He is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Public Utility Commissioner, and Professor at the Wharton School.
Dictionaries are always among the best selling volumes on the market.
A dictionary is one of the most valuable and most used kinds of reference books. But despite their frequency of use and universal presence in offices and homes and elsewhere, most people don't know how to tell the good ones from the bad ones. As a result, publishers and vendors of books know that it is easy to sell a lousy dictionary and fool the public into thinking they are getting their money's worth when they are not. It does not. Every good dictionary is written in code, says Frederick C. Mish, a master specialist in the world of lexicography and editor of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, a classic, quality dictionary.