HomeMy WebLinkAbout6/27/2018 Item 1, Lucas (2)
Tonikian, Victoria
From:Davidson, Doug
Sent:Tuesday, June 26, 2018 3:48 PM
To:Tonikian, Victoria
Subject:FW: Please forward this letter to the Planning Commission for the June 27 meeting
PC Correspondence 6/27
From: Bob \[ ]
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2018 3:08 PM
To: Davidson, Doug <ddavidson@slocity.org>
Subject: Please forward this letter to the Planning Commission for the June 27 meeting
An enormous amount of work has gone into updating the zoning regulations, including the creation of
a lexicon of technical terminology. But much of the benefit of this work can be lost if good people
cannot agree about the meanings of the more common words used in daily language.
At the beginning of Article 9, the proposed regulations state that if a word is not defined in this
section, that the commonest usage or definition as found in most dictionaries should prevail.
To be sure, referring people to the most common definition in dictionaries is better than nothing. But
some of the more readily available dictionaries have been compiled by publishers that hired some
English majors to look at what’s out there, and to come up with alternate definitions that don’t look like
they have been stolen from other dictionaries, that is, plagiarized.
Fortunately, we don’t have to leave identifying common usage to chance. As I have mentioned
before in public testimony, the American Heritage Dictionary distinguished itself in lexicographical
history by engaging an outside usage panel of some 200 experts from around the US to help identify
the most common definitions of terms. This panel comprised writers like Isaac Asimov and Annie
Dillard, as well as notables such as John Kenneth Galbraith, Stewart Udall, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Robert
Reich, and even Tony Randall. (It also included a former colleague of mine, Sheridan Baker, of the
English Language and Literature Department at the University of Michigan, a man highly respected in
the field, although not as well known outside.)
These folks have already done the work of reading through a list of options for meanings and voting
for the ones most likely to be used in daily conversation and writing. The dictionary presents the
definitions in order of most common to least. With a dictionary like this, there should be little danger of
unnecessary ambiguity during debates by city staff, developers, or community members about what a
word commonly means. Using this dictionary will certainly obviate the possibility of a debate over
which of, say, three dictionaries has the best definition, and gives people a common base upon which
to build their arguments, thereby minimizing waste.
If you would like to try out the dictionary, you can do so
online. https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=minimize , for instance, gives you the
Dictionary's definition of the word “minimize.” And while at that site, you can search any other word
whose meaning might be vexing you right now just by entering it in the box above.
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What I am proposing is that at the beginning of Article 9, the American Heritage Dictionary be
identified as the primary source of authority on the common meanings of words that are not otherwise
defined in the Article itself.
Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in The American Heritage Dictionary. My interest is that of a
scholar; I have a PhD in English from the University of Illinois, with an emphasis in philology (from the
Greek root meaning “love of words”). I hate to see things I love get misused.
Best wishes,
Bob Lucas
1831 San Luis Dr.
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