Issuance

Today in Salon.com is an interview with Michael Shermer, who's just written a book called "Why Darwin Matters". Here's a letter to the editor from the article's letters section:

I'll let others discuss the real stuff, but...
"We chatted around the dining room table, stacked with issues of the latest Skeptic magazine"
You mean COPIES of the latest ISSUE.
Fuck, that bugs me every time.

You know what bugs me every time? Prescriptivists who make lofty pronouncements without even bothering to look up the word in question.

"Issue" does in fact mean "edition", as the writer says. However, another definition of "issue", as common sense and a quick trip to the dictionary would have demonstrated, is, as Answers.com puts it,

A single copy of a periodical: the May issue of the magazine.

It's standard usage, it's well-attested, and it appears in the dictionary. "...[T]able, stacked with issues of the latest Skeptic magazine" is unimpeachably correct. So there, Anonymous. And watch that potty mouth.