This page is part of the Proceedings of Wikimania 2006 (Index of presentations)

Practical (and Annoying) Problems in Dictionary Compiling

Author Erin McKean
Track
License GNU Free Documentation License (details)
About the author
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).
0Missing
1Submitted
2Editing
3Review
4Final edit
5Complete
6Done


Full text


PDF


Notes


Slides


Audio


Video

Discuss