News that the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary will, likely enough, not be printed (when it's eventually finished, that is) seems to have mutated into a ridiculous 'death of the book' debate.

Let us not forget that we are talking about the monumental 20-volume definitive dictionary here - the one where each revision takes decades to prepare - as opposed to the more ordinary dictionaries that are to be found in so many households and offices.

Author Simon Winchester, who's written A BOOK about this legendary dictionary, stoked up the hysteria with this ludicrous pronouncement in the Telegraph: "The printed book is about to vanish at extraordinary speed. I have two complete OEDs, but never consult them - I use the online OED five or six times daily. The same with many of my reference books - and soon with most. Books are about to vanish... these are inescapable realities."

Oh puh-lease. Calm down Simon. Your world view seems to be wholly informed by your proximity to and use of reference books. What about children's books? Cookery books? Glossy coffee table books? Trashy novels for holiday reading?

Anyone under the illusion that books are 'about to vanish' could usefully spend a day at a CPI production facility (group output: 600m books a year), or St Ives Clays (160m), or they could perhaps count the number of book-filled packages leaving Amazon's depot in a typical day.

This rumpus caused me to look up the definition of idiot in PrintWeek's much-thumbed Concise Oxford Dictionary: "from the Latin idiota 'ignorant person'." Quite.