Coming up on Word Matters, a visit to Merriam-Webster's citation files.
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amin Shea,
Peter Sokolowski and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
The backbone of Merriam-Webster's lexicography from its earliest days is a particular and peculiar collection of data known as the citation files.
Today, Peter and I are going to give you a tour of this remarkable collection.
As we speak, it is late November of 2021,
and I have not actually worked in our Springfield,
Massachusetts office since the middle of March of 2020.
And I'm missing it.
I'm missing working in our office.
One of my favorite things about the Marion Webster office building in Springfield,
Massachusetts is the smell that it has.
It smells like books.
It smells like a library.
It also contains... one of my favorite resources in the world,
and that is our extensive citation files.
The editorial department's on the second floor of this brick building,
and there are a lot of cubicles,
of course, where the editors sit and silently work typing away on their keyboards.