Re: British English Dictioinaries

Subject: Re: British English Dictioinaries
From: Carol Atack <carol -at- ANT -dot- CO -dot- UK>
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 09:12:38 +0000

At 2:52 pm -0400 27/6/96, Stan Radomski wrote:
>All,

>This question is really for all my colleagues across the puddle (and those
>to the north and down under may also have some valid information)...

>What dictionaries do you use other than the OED? I believe there is also
>a Concise Oxford which would probably fit our needs but I'm not sure what
>else may be available and valid.

There is an in-between version, the Shorter English Dictionary, which may
be more suitable for professional use. The Concise is a bit too concise
(though an excellent dictionary). There is also the Collins range of
dictionaries (which have a reputation of being a little bit more
up-to-date, though I haven't done any direct comparisons).


>Also, do you know if these are available electronically? I'll be contacting
>some of the people that make 'em but I always like to have a little
>knowledge so my questions don't seem completely foolish.

OUP's dictionary products are almost all available on CD-ROM. (perhaps one
day someone will buy me the OED on CD-ROM :) They also do a range of
specialist dictionaries including collections of reference works and
dictionaries for science and business writers, called the Oxford
<specialism> Shelf. The computing content of the 'Science shelf' is a bit
old-fashioned and oriented more to academic than business computing.

Cambridge University Press do an excellent handbook on copy-editing which
as they publish a lot of scientific and technical reference material has a
lot of useful stuff on technical editing.

To be honest, for specialist references for computer terminology I use US
sources and spellings, such as the Microsoft Manual of Style. And I don't
use a dictionary much for day-to-day work: I think that if I have to look a
word up to use it, it is inappropriate to include it in user documentation.


Hope this helps

Carol Atack
Cambridge

--
Carol Atack Tel: +44 1223 518221
Email: mailto:carol -at- ant -dot- co -dot- uk WWW: http://www.ant.co.uk/~carol

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