it bugs me too. then i go read some pinker and get over my bad self.

"Am I just being fussy?" Yes. Keep it up.

It is wrong and you are fussy. For god's sake, don't read the headlines editors write! There's nothing even approaching a complete thought in most of them these days, forget about complete sentences or grammar. :)

It's not a grammatical error, it is a mistaken idiom. "Stacks up" is an idiom meaning "compares," the visual being several stack of items, coins, etc. side by side.

Perhaps the mispronounced idiom was picked up from a British speaker. Or depending on the particular usage "stocks up" could denote "accumulates" which would be an entirely different meaning from "stacks up."

Andi, we in Britain too say 'stack up'. However since we are on the subject of grammar, it is not a 'mispronounced idiom' but a (probably) misheard (definitely) informal phrasal verb. The meaning of the idiom cannot be deciphered from the literal expression, a problem from which the said phrase does not suffer, unless one is completely challenged in the area of visualisation... At worst, that makes 'stacks up' a malapropism.

Yours,
Pedantics United of Britain

Haha! Pedantics United wanted to say 'stocks up' in that last line.

Humbly yours,

PUofB

I've never seen "stocks up" for "stacks up," thank god. It sounds like more proof of The Dumbing of America.