I am delighted that Potts has written a rebuttal, for it gives me achance to correct his errors, acknowledge his agreements, address hispublisher, and by condemning his book again, strike another blow forbetter literature.

He is wrong about the title of his book. The title is the wholeenchilada as it appears at the head of my review. That is what is on thetitle page above the author’s name and on the verso as the title used bythe Library of Congress in its catalog.

I am happy to learn that Potts agrees with me that the book is notcomprehensive.

Data communications, telecommunications, and telephony areinextricably interlocked and Potts is wrong to try to enforce anarbitrary separation. A dictionary that purports to comprehensivelycover data communications must cover telephony. Potts says hedeliberately avoided the subject, but, as might be expected, he failedand had to include telephony in some definitions. See, for example, DCEand DAA.

I agree with Potts that difficulty of use is a subjective judgment,but a dictionary that a skilled and experienced reviewer finds hard touse may well be impossible to be used by the average bookstorebrowser.

With Potts’s help, I found “5ESS,” indexed as if itwere “Five-E-Ess-Ess,” which it is not. He may have“very thoroughly addressed” the issue of indexalphabetization, but he came out with the wrong answer. Furthermore, hisindexer did not faithfully follow the rule of “numerals as ifspelled out.” To mention only one example, look at“Modem,” where, according to the spell-out rule, “Bell208” should have been listed before “Bell 201.”

As I understood him, Potts deprecated vendor glossaries by sayingthat they are “biased in favor of the products with which they areassociated.” This is certainly an expression of mild disapprovalwhich, according to my dictionary, is synonymous with the fancier word“deprecate.”

Finally, I must end this re-rebuttal by remarking that asubstandard book like this is not only the fault of the author and hiseditor. The publisher must share the blame. It appears that publishers,in their mad pursuit of profits, overload their editors, eliminate theirsupport staffs, and produce books like this, of which theyshould be ashamed. It is a reviewer’s sad duty to point this out again,and again, and again.