Whatever Happened to Around the World?

by Steve M. Schlissel  

Originally posted April 30, 2020

This post is an honest plea for an answer to a question which has been, uh, plaguing me for a couple of years: Whatever happened to “AROUND the world”? In every instance where I’d expect to read, “around the world,” I’m instead jarred to find “across.” It feels as though flat-earthers have won an unpublicized battle, which somehow bestowed upon them an unchallengeable authority to dictate the adjectives, metaphors and phrases permitted for describing all phenomena whose field of occurrence exceeds 180° longitude. Does anyone know how and/or when this section of the style manual was “updated”? Like so many other “improvements,” it isn’t.

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