my dictionary dilemma

I wrote a while back about having subscribed to the unabridged Merriam-Webster (M-W) dictionary online. It made sense, given the freelance writing work that I am doing. But then the thought occurred to me: have I gone over to the Dark Side?

I have been an advocate of the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) for decades. I have long loved its more prescriptive as opposed to descriptive approach (though that is a serious oversimplification). The usage notes with the AHD usage panel can be very helpful. In my B. Dalton Bookseller days in the 1970s and 1980s I was able to singlehandedly skew the sales reports in the stores in which I worked, increasing AHD sales at the expense of the whatever-current-at-the-time edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. I would chortle with delight when I saw those reports.

Even today the AHD sometimes includes details not found in the M-W unabridged. When looking up the word "bake-off" for a piece I was writing both M-W and AHD capitalized the phrase and said that it was a Service Mark. But only AHD added the note that it was sometimes used lower case and generically. Similarly, the M-W unabridged does not list "podiatric," while AHD does list it as an adjective under podiatry.

The problem is that it is not clear to me how much in the way of resources are being put into the AHD these days and whether we'll see another edition after the current 5th, given that its publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is a struggling firm. M-W seems to have effectively made the transition to the digital world and appears to be healthily surviving if not thriving.

Yes, I paid for my subscription to the unabridged M-W and that was the Right Thing to do given the work I am doing. But I can't shake the feeling that I am cheating on a long-time faithful lover.