Erin McKean is editor in chief of U.S. dictionaries for Oxford University Press. She is the editor of Verbatim: The Language Quarterly and the author of Weird and Wonderful Words and More Weird and Wonderful Words. McKean has a BA and an MA in Linguistics from the University of Chicago. While there, she worked as a volunteer at the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. Before OUP, she spent eight years at Scott Foresman, where she worked on the Thorndike Barnhart children's dictionaries. McKean is a member of the American Dialect Society, the American Names Society, and Euralex and is a member of the board of the Dictionary Society of North America. Her publications include two papers in Dictionaries, the journal of the DSNA. She is a computer enthusiast and has given several presentations on SGML and XML to Chicago Webgrrls.
Abstract
This presentation forms part of the following panel:
J.R. Hulbert once wrote 'I know of no more enjoyable intellectual activity than working on a dictionary,' and most professional lexicographers agree with his statement. However, even though lexicography is, in the main, enjoyable, there are still plenty of niggling and annoying problems, solvable and un-, involved in producing dictionary content. Considering various problems in commercial, semi-commercial, and wiki-style lexicography, we'll discuss possible solutions, workarounds, and whether some problems are better confronted head-on or just ignored (in the hopes they'll just go away).