Some linguists would argue that there’s no point fighting against slips like that—that language is forever unfixed and deviations should simply be observed and even appreciated—or that it’s silliness to tell people to follow rules that are as arbitrary as the meaning assigned to a certain jumble of letters. But Garner is not one of them.

I've been a UK resident for over 70 years, have two degrees from a very well known university, and find both zeros and zeroes quite acceptable as the plural form. So our perceptions are different. Do we toss a coin, or see who can shout the louder? ... Dictionaries are less open to subjective bias than individuals because of the averaging effect of carefully controlled large surveys (and acceptability is usage driven). It's good to realise that personal preferences may not be the best basis for judging correctness.

Note that dictionaries document the (current, at the time of going to press) usage of language, they aren't authoritative. 'Correct' is what is in common usage and largely understood to be correct, even if that contradicts a dictionary (in which case the dictionary is probably out-of-date).

Who says it's not a word? Not a word, simply because lexicographers have not recognized it? When a lexicographer recognizes it, it has already been in use! Even Mr. Fiske says it is a word, although he obviously disprefers it.

I have become a dyed in the wool descriptionist because of Language Log, and have been known to cite entries here in battle against of the prescriptionistas of the Axis of Evil within the blogosphere.

At the entry for irregardless, we provide a paragraph in which we note that the use of the word is still met with considerable objection, and we even go so far as to advise the reader to use regardless instead—which is about as close as we get to offering a usage prescription in our dictionaries.

Linguistic description is often contrasted with linguistic prescription

usage is also, however, a concern for the prescriptive tradition, for which "correctness" is a matter of arbitrating style

In the descriptive tradition of language analysis, by way of contrast, "correct" tends to mean functionally adequate for the purposes of the speaker or writer using it, and adequately idiomatic to be accepted by the listener or reader

This is not an attempt to arrest the evolution of the language, but to correct mistakes.

If you’d like to give this approach to executing projects a try, now isthe perfect time.Start by picking one project you want to move forward on. It couldbe one you identified in Chapter 5, when I asked you to make foldersfor each active project.

I like to keep the ‘verb’ + ‘noun’ structure when writing button labels — this makes the action more prescriptive, e.g. ‘Save post’, ‘Next step’, etc, as opposed to ‘Save’, ‘Next’

my point is that using "into" in such a case is just as incorrect as using "inas" would be. The fact that people make mistakes doesn't change this.

In a sentence like Log in as "admin", you'd never write "*inas" as one word. Same thing with "in" and "to" when they just happen to end up next to each other in a sentence.

That sounds like a pretty prescriptive attitude towards the language.