The Encarta World English Dictionary, spawn of the popular Microsoft CD-ROM and Internet reference products, covers this new development in the language thoroughly and efficiently, creating a reference tool for anyone hooked into the new global culture. It's a global language now, a lingua franca with over 1.5 billion speakers, readers, and writers, so it's about time our reference shelves caught up with reality. Over 1,500 unique Word Stories on usage notesĮnglish doesn't belong to England-or any other country-any more. Over 1,000 boxed cultural and regional notes ![]() The Encarta World English Dictionary has: With each word newly defined, the Encarta World English Dictionary is the most up-to-date dictionary on the market and will offer a unique perspective on English as the world's language. The work of more than 250 lexicographers in 10 countries, the Encarta World English Dictionary is the first reference work that traces the global use of English in its written, spoken and electronic forms. It combines the work of the world's largest and best team of lexicographers with the power of Microsoft Encarta, the premier name in electronic consumer reference. Created using computer, Internet and database technology in a groundbreaking way, this is the first newly written dictionary in more than 30 years. ( July)įorecast: Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia took a beating for its omissions and mistakes this imperfect dictionary should compete not with comprehensive reference works (as Encarta World English meant to) but with other college dictionaries-it could do very well if promoted vigorously.The Encarta World English Dictionary is a publishing event that will set the standard for all future dictionaries. ![]() These and other choices may strike know-it-alls as bad news, but likely they will please a hurried, or less sophisticated, readership-the volume may irritate purists, but it fills a genuine, perhaps an important, niche. astronaut" and "British author." Obscure words and technical senses turn up, but not always reliably-"no-kill" (of an animal shelter) but not "noisette" "lingual" means only "of the tongue" or "of language," though it bears, in phonetics, a more specific sense. Frequent wrong spellings ("vinagrette," "twelvth") appear as their own entries in gray strikethrough type inserts following definitions explain correct usage, distinguishing, for example, "flaunt" from "flout." Other inserts give "literary links" (Camus for "stranger," Forster for "view") or offer "quick facts" about terms like "chaos theory." Encarta gives proper nouns troublingly minimal definitions: "Neil Armstrong" and "Jane Austen" get big portrait photos, but are identified only as "U.S. With help from many college English teachers, lead editor Soukhanov ( Word Watch) and crew aim skillfully at undergraduates and others who need help avoiding common errors. ![]() The second, more substantial, difference concerns its audience. Instead of an essay on historical linguistics, Encarta gives a very practical five-page essay on Web research methods and Netiquette. The first, predictably, concerns technology: Encarta includes entries for "electronic town hall," "LMK" ("let me know" in e-mail) and, yes, LINUX, marking tech-related definitions with a (silly-looking) lightning bolt. ![]() Aimed primarily at students-and redacted from Microsoft's Encarta World English Dictionary (2001)-this new volume promises two things competitors such as American Heritage lack.
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