Do publishers put false info in dictionaries to catch plagiarists?
David Justice (david@frnk303.franklin.com) writes: For what it’s worth, I worked a few years at Merriam-Webster (late 1980s) and can attest that we never deliberately inserted false stuff for purposes of catching plagiarists. For one thing, every dictionary I’ve ever examined has been all too full of unintentional errors, and they could serve the same purpose. On the other hand, books such as Who’s Who do have fictitious entries.
