Bless you for bringing this up, Rhuby!
My foremost linguistic peeve of late. In fact, I had prepared an alpha-post about this some time ago which I discussed with AnnaS, but was distracted and never posted it. What really made me hit the fan was when a publication of the calibre of
Archaeology used it in an article late last year instead of the traditional
became extinct/will become extinct. This after a few years of being inundated here in the media with
gone missing,
go missing, and
went missing. There are several other like usages that have been similarly changed, but I'd have to find that old handwritten notesheet I made.
So does anyone have any idea when this started, where, and why? It was suggested that it was Britishism, but this thread seems to refute that. The other suggestion is "media expedience"...saves words. But it has always sounded awkward to me. I don't like it, and never will. I think this appeared just a few years ago, 5-7 perhaps, but it seems to have taken hold.
