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Collins Electronic Dictionary

by

popular electronic talking dictionary

Dictionary owners have been quicker than most publishers to exploit the commercial possibilities of their databases. This software offers a talking dictionary containing 80,000 words. It comes with a set of tools for speedy and accurate look-up of any words or phrases on your computer. The information about each item is fairly basic, but pronunciation using the voices of professional native speakers is used in the audio recordings.

Collins Electronic DictionaryThe dictionary can be used with any other computer application to get the definition and correct spelling of words – as well as for listening to a reading of each entry. It’s part of a series that uses the complete text of printed dictionaries, adapted so that they sit on a corner of your screen while you’re working.

It’s designed for non-native English users, but the adaptation to computer has been so well thought out that native English speakers who want more than a spell checker will also find it useful. One good feature is that long entries have their own scroll button, so that you can read each entry without enlarging the dictionary screen or losing your place.

If you encounter a word in a definition you don’t understand, you simply right click on it and jump to its definition; then a single click takes you back to the original entry. Bookmarks can be used for more complex cross-referencing.

Definitions can be transferred to the main screen via the clipboard or drag and drop, and text can also be imported into the dictionary where each word will automatically be defined. You can hear all headwords in standard English pronunciation at a single click. Learners can then practice their pronunciation, comparing it with the original.

There’s also a system of entertaining and dynamic exercises which enables you to not only memorize the words you need, but also type them correctly. You can also monitor your progress and displayed with helpful graphics.

© Roy Johnson 2000

Collins Electronic Dictionary   Buy the CD at Amazon UK

Collins Electronic Dictionary   Buy the CD at Amazon US

Intense Language Office / Collins Talking Dictionary on CD-Rom; HarperCollins Publishers 1995 / Intense Educational Ltd 2002. ISBN: 1903397154

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Collins French-English Dictionary

by

talking dictionary dual-language software

Don’t be misled by the title of this program. It’s is two books in one – a French-English dictionary as well as an English-French. And it’s very easy to switch between the two. The program installs effortlessly and takes up 44MB of hard disk space. In terms of sheer vocabulary there are over 80,000 words and phrases, and over 120,000 translations. It can be used with any other computer application to translate words and phrases, as well as for listening to the pronunciation of French and English words.

Collins French-English DictionaryThe word-base comes from the Collins paper dictionary, and you can easily add other dictionaries into the same basic program. There’s a talk-through introduction explaining all these functions – done by a very fruity-voiced woman, who even started playing jazz piano part way through. Each entry has a sound file attached giving the correct pronunciation. The sound files can either be run from the CD or copied permanently onto your hard drive. If the program reads the sound files off the CD, there’s a teensy time-lag first time you click on a word, but after that each successive selection plays instantly.

The program can sit in a small window in the corner of your screen, so you can keep it open unobtrusively whilst working on another document. I liked the fact that you can locate a term easily, simply by typing the first few letters into a dialogue box.

You can also work with the dictionary in condensed or expanded mode – which means that less or more details are shown for each entry. And you can test your grasp of the language as you go along with either a shooting gallery exercise or a crossword.

The AudioPad feature gives you the chance to practise your speaking skills with the help of professionals. You compare your pronunciation with the expert speaker, and see the result in sound waves on screen.

There’s a full HELP system which explains how to use and configure the program. It also lists keyboard shortcuts. Useful tips, answers to frequently asked questions, and database updates are available at the publisher’s web site.

Who is it for? I would say beginners to intermediate, as well as professional and business users. I’ve been using it to brush up my restaurant-level French skills, so that I can get closer to the goodies of Provencal gastronomy. And it works.

© Roy Johnson 2005

Collins French-English Talking Dictionary   Buy the CD at Amazon UK

Collins French-English Talking Dictionary   Buy the CD at Amazon US

Collins Talking French-English Dictionary, Intense Educational, 2004, CD-ROM

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Collins Spanish-English Dictionary

by

dual-language talking dictionary

Don’t be misled by the title of this program. It’s is two dictionaries in one – a Spanish-English dictionary as well as English-Spanish. And it’s very easy to switch between the two. The program installs effortlessly and takes up 44MB of hard disk space. In terms of sheer vocabulary there are over 80,000 words and phrases, and over 120,000 translations. The dictionary can be used with any other computer application to translate words and phrases, as well as for listening to the correct pronunciation of Spanish and English words.

Spanish-English DictionaryThe dictionary word-base comes from the Collins paper dictionary, and you can easily add other dictionaries into the same basic program. There’s a talk-through introduction explaining all these functions – done by a very fruity-voiced woman, who even started playing jazz piano part way through.

Each entry has a sound file attached giving the correct pronunciation. The sound files can either be run from the CD or copied permanently onto your hard drive. If the program reads the sound files off the CD, there’s a teensy time-lag first time you click on a word, but after that each successive selection plays instantly.

The program can sit in a small window in the corner of your screen, so you can keep it open unobtrusively whilst working on another document. I liked the fact that you can locate a term easily, simply by typing the first few letters into a dialogue box.

You can also work with the dictionary in condensed or expanded mode – which means that less or more details are shown for each entry. And you can test your grasp of the language as you go along with either a shooting gallery exercise or a crossword.

The AudioPad feature gives you the chance to practise your speaking skills with the help of professionals. You compare your pronunciation with the expert speaker, and see the result in sound waves on screen.

There’s a full HELP system which explains how to use and configure the program. It also lists keyboard shortcuts. Useful tips, answers to frequently asked questions, and database updates are available at the publisher’s web site.

It recognises the importance of distinctions between European and Latin-American usages, and each definition comes with a sign as to whether it is used in Spain or in the Americas.

Who is it for? I would say beginners to intermediate, as well as professional and business users. I’ve been using it to brush up my restaurant-level Spanish skills, so that I can get closer to the goodies of Andalucian gastronomy. And it works.

© Roy Johnson 2004

Collins Spanish-English Dictionary   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Collins Spanish-English Dictionary   Buy the book at Amazon US

Collins Talking Spanish-English Dictionary, Intense Educational, 2004, CD-ROM

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Compact Dictionary for Students

by

dictionary + writing and study skills

Despite record-breaking results in GCSEs and A levels, many employers, colleges, and universities complain that they have applications from people who cannot spell or write good English. This is not to say that ‘standards are falling’ – which I don’t believe. On the contrary it seems to me that standards are actually rising – because we are surrounded in print, on screen, and everywhere else by high-quality writing. But more employers and teachers now expect people to be able to produce similarly clear prose, free from ambiguity and grammatical errors.

Compact Dictionary for Students So Oxford University Press have come up with a brand-new dictionary to help students in colleges and universities not only grasp the meanings and spellings of words, but to understand their origins. With over 144,000 words, phrases, and definitions, it offers comprehensive coverage of current English and is perfect for student reference and everyday study needs. They have also done their best to reduce the normally intimidating appearance of pages in a dense book of reference. Each headword is printed in blue instead of the usual black, and this gives the page a lighter tone. It makes the twelve hundred page book (not so compact!) much easier to use.

The really big bonus however is an additional central section which explains how to brush up your English, and how to produce essays and dissertations. It also covers reports and summaries, advice on note-taking and referencing, and preparing CVs and job applications.

Throughout the text there are also notes giving advice on the use of good English, and highlighting the differences between commonly confused words such as empathy and sympathy, and affect and effect, as well as thousands of example phrases showing words in context.

There are also boxed explanations of common problems and misunderstandings. So – the entry on forbear runs as follows:

forbear1 /for-bair / verb (past forebore; past. part. forborne) stop oneself from doing something. – ORIGIN Old English.

USAGE Do not confuse forbear with forebear. Forbear means ‘stop oneself from doing something’ (he doesn’t forbear to write about the bad times ) while forebear (which is also sometimes spelled forbear) means ‘an ancestor’ (our Stone Age forebears).

There is guidance provided on which verbal register a word belongs to – that is, if it’s formal or informal, dated (rotter) literary, technical (dorsal), derogatory (bimbo), offensive, or euphemistic (powder room).

If you were just embarking on a course at college or university, this would be a very good investment. It’s comprehensive, completely up to date, and with Amazon’s discount, a bargain at the price.

© Roy Johnson 2006

Compact Dictionary for Students   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Compact Oxford English Dictionary for Students, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.1210, ISBN: 0199296251

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Computers and Language

by

essays on computers, teaching, and writing

What has been the impact of the PC in the classroom? Computers and Language is collection of essays presenting the results of studies monitoring research on the subject, and it offers one or two extended position papers and guides to software. John Pratt for instance explores the commonly observed phenomenon that students tend to be less inhibited in exploring writing programmes than their tutors – a point reinforced by other contributions. Maybe the next generation will have a different attitude to composition if they have grown up in front of a screen rather than a note book?

Computers and LanguageChris Breeze argues in a letter to his headmaster that working on a PC encourages children to re-draft their work. Most teachers of writing would probably agree that this is something to be encouraged. It is interesting to observe however that one or two of the articles start out as a celebration of the PC as a liberating tool for students, but then gradually reveal the author’s wish to control production. Teachers rule – OK?

There are a couple of [obligatory?] chapters dealing with Hypertext as an adjunct to constructing narratives. Stephen Marcus inspects the use of Hypertext programmes [GUIDE, HYPERCARD] and makes what in the hands of school-age children might be rather ambitious claims for them. If the debates currently raging in the alt.hypertext newsgroup are anything to go by, this is still a contentious issue. There is as yet no fictional hypertext which has staked a claim for aesthetic distinction – but its defendants point out that no other medium produced a masterpiece at first outing.

The most engaging and informative contribution is from Noel Williams – a straightforward review of the software available to assist authors in the post-writing phase. He examines programmes such as GRAMMATIK (then still in version IV) WRITER’S WORKBENCH, and CORPORATE VOICE. In the end he comes down heavily in favour of Ruskin. Like most other commentators on this type of spell- and grammar-checking software, he suggests that people should not be intimidated by rule-governed programmes, encouraging us to “ignor[re] those parts of the system which do not match … writer’s needs”.

One of the main problems with articles and publications of this nature is that they are now rapidly superseded by software updates and discussion which takes place more immediately on the Internet. Nevertheless, there is probably good reason for a place for this collection in the departmental library.

© Roy Johnson 2001

Computers and Language   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Moira Monteith (ed), Computers and Language, Oxford: Intellect, 1993, pp.159, ISBN: 1871516277

Concise Dictionary of Quotations

by

who said what, why, when – and about whom

This Concise Dictionary of Quotations is a cut-down version of the fifth edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. It contains over 9000 quotations from more than 2500 authors, and maintains its extensive coverage of literary and historical quotations. New material has been added from today’s influential literary and cultural figures. Entries range alphabetically from Diane Abbot (UK MP) to Emile Zola and Zoroastrian Scriptures. Chronologically, they run from classics which still seem up to date, as in ‘Everyone is quick to blame the alien’ (Aeschylus, 456 BC) and ‘Rumour is not always wrong’ (Tacitus, AD 95) – to pithy laments from recently deposed politicians.

Oxford Concise Dictionary of Quotations The standard quotations from written texts have also been supplemented by ‘Sayings and Slogans’ drawn from the world of advertising and politics, newly coined catchphrases, film lines, recent newspaper headlines, and popular modern sayings. There’s also an appendix of famous film lines and last words, amongst which my favourites were Mae West’s ‘Lets get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini’, or Oscar Wilde, speaking of the wallpaper in the room where he was dying: ‘One of us must go’.

Many entries are not so much quotations as extracts from famous texts. The Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, and poets such as Pope, Keats, Browning, and Eliot are all heavily represented.

This is the sort of book you would consult if you saw a well-known phrase such as ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair’ and didn’t know it was from Wordsworth, or ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’ and didn’t know it is by Samuel Johnson.

Searches are made either by author in alphabetical order, or via a huge index of key words which traces quotations and their authors.

Woody Allen 1935-
I recently turned sixty. Practically a third of my life is now over.

in Observer 10 March 1996 ‘Sayings of the Week’

What’s the difference, you might ask, between this and the Dictionary of Quotations by Subject and the Dictionary of Literary Quotations?

The answer is that although this also uses writers and artists as sources, the main intention here is to include quotations from all the main sources – religious texts, Greco-Roman classics, and the original sources include political figures, people from the worlds of sport and entertainment, and various nonentities who have managed to make themselves famous just by the odd bon mot.

© Roy Johnson 2003

Concise Dictionary of Quotations   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Concise Dictionary of Quotations   Buy the book at Amazon US

Elizabeth Knowles (ed), Oxford Concise Dictionary of Quotations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp.547, ISBN: 0198607520

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Concise Oxford Dictionary

by

best-selling one-volume desktop reference

Choosing a dictionary can be very much a matter of personal taste, but the Concise Oxford Dictionary has several features which have always made it a great favourite with writers. It is based upon the monumental Oxford English Dictionary and its latest supplements, which gives it a very good pedigree. At a practical level, it’s perfect for the desktop and easy to handle. I always reach for this one first. For the latest edition, Oxford’s lexicographers have rewritten every entry to represent English as it is used today.

Concise Oxford Dictionary There are over 240,000 words, phrases and meanings covering current and historical English, and specialist and technical areas. Each entry is now clearer and more accessible, with the most modern meanings placed first, and definitions given in a clear and straightforward style. Authoritative guidance on grammar and usage is provided in highlighted boxes, and there are also new Word Formation panels that show how complex words are created.

Full explanations of pronunciation, inflexion, and historical derivation are offered in a systematic manner, and the latest edition also includes a wide range of abbreviations. The Concise Oxford was first published one hundred years ago, and this centenary edition continues the tradition of providing an authoritative coverage of English as it is used today.

Another welcome feature (added as a result of reader-demand) is guidance on matters of disputed and controversial usage. Now you can be warned about that possible non-PC faux-pas (both included) – and it also shows the differences for spellings in American English.

I’ve actually got two copies: one old and battered with use which has been on the bookshelf for years; the other a recent edition which was a present to my office when I moved here.

The critic Cyril Connolly once said that if you knew all the words in the Oxford Concise, you would have a big enough vocabulary to be civilized, fluent, and literate. The jacket-cover advert isn’t exaggerating when it says “The world’s favourite”. If you only have room for a single dictionary, it should be this one.

© Roy Johnson 2011

Concise Oxford Dictionary   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Concise Oxford English Dictionary (12th updated edn) 2011, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.1728, ISBN: 0199601089

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Damp Squid: English Laid Bare

by

how language is changing – and why

Truth be told, this is quite an advanced book on language use written from deep within the research vaults of the English linguistic history, but it’s written in a language that most people will be able to understand. Behind the apparently frivolous and amusing selection of examples in Damp Squid, Jeremy Butterfield is offering a serious update on how lexicography is conducted in the digital age.

language useDictionaries are no longer constructed from contributions handed in on slips of paper by enthusiastic amateurs: they are compiled by software programs crunching vast stockpiles of words stored in databases – known as the ‘corpus’. This is a collection of examples of how the English language is actually being used, drawn from the printed word – from literary novels and specialist journals to everyday newspapers and magazines, and from Hansard to the language of chatrooms, emails, and weblogs.

The complete database (of the Oxford Corpus) contains over two billion words, and is being expanded at the rate of 350 million new words every year. The Corpus reveals those words we use most frequently (the, is, to and) – but it has to be observed that these are based on written evidence – not the language we speak.

He looks at the origins of English language, which comes from a bewildering variety of sources – Old English, French, Norse, Greek and Latin, plus words borrowed from more than 350 other languages.

The current social activities generating most new words include information technology, lifestyle, media, sport, ecology, fashion, and cuisine. These new words are coined by making compounds from old terms (bedmate, streetwise) clipping and back-formation (advert, emote) portmanteau (chortle, podcast) eponyms (Biro)and foreign suffixes such as —ati (It: glitterati) —ista (Sp: Guardianista) and —fest (Gr: bookfest).

He has a good chapter on irregularities of spelling and pronunciation, culminating in a review of ‘eggcorns’ – understandable mistakes such as just desserts, free-reign, and baited breath – many of which are so widespread there is a danger of their becoming accepted.

He is a fully committed descriptivist. That is, his job as he sees it is to record the manner in which the English language is used, no matter how much it might change its meanings. Hence the title of the book. He argues that damp squid makes just as much sense as the original damp squib – because we hardly ever use the term squib any more. This might infuriate traditionalists and prescriptive grammarians, and it does neglect to note that a squid can hardly be anything other than damp, since it lives in the sea, so the metaphor loses all its force: it fails to make an imaginative connection between two disparate things.

In fact he takes things even further in his conclusion, where he delivers a vigorous critique of what he calls the ‘language Nazis’ – those people who write to newspapers complaining about the decline of the English language (and are aided and abetted by the BBC).

© Roy Johnson 2008

Damp Squid   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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Jeremy Butterfield, Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.179, ISBN: 019957409X

Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors

by

specialist scientific style guide and reference

This Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors is aimed at scholars working in an academic setting and people writing or editing scientific papers – say in book publishing or the mass print media. It gives exact details of how scientific matter is presented in written form – both in terms of the correct spelling for scientific terms and the manner in which scientific data such as equations are rendered on the page. It’s part of a set of specialist dictionaries and style guides produced by Oxford University Press.

Dictionary for Scientific Writers and EditorsThe OUP is the number one source for reference books of this kind, and the series manages to compress huge, unwieldy databases of information into a handy, useable format. This single volume includes over 9,700 entries which reflect accepted usage, and it follows the recommendations of international scientific bodies such as the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

It gives clear guidance on such matters as spellings (American English and British English), punctuation, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes, units and quantities, and symbols. Also included are the correct spelling of chemical and medical terms; short explanations of the meaning of scientific concepts; basic data about famous scientists; explanations of acronyms; and definitions of terms.

There are appendices with lists of chemical and electro-magnetic symbols; the periodic table; scientific symbols; and a list of web-based resources. It provides substantially enlarged coverage from previous editions, with increased coverage of the life sciences, and new entries in physics, astronomy, chemistry, computer science, and mathematics.

This comprehensive and authoritative A-Z guide is an invaluable tool for students, professionals, and publishers working with writing in the fields of physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, biochemistry, genetics, immunology, microbiology, astronomy, mathematics, and computer science.

These style guides are in a curious format – royal sixteenmo – which is smaller than a conventional book, but too bulky to be pocket-sized. But I must say that it looks quite diminutively handsome on my shelves alongside its colleagues the New Oxford Spelling Dictionary, New Hart’s Rules, and the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation.

© Roy Johnson 2009

Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors   Buy the book at Amazon US

New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.451, ISBN: 0199545154

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Dictionary for Writers and Editors

by

difficult cases of spellings and expressions

The Dictionary for Writers and Editors has been ‘repurposed’ from its original larger-scale edition to sit alongside the New Oxford Spelling Dictionary, New Hart’s Rules, and the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation. These form a group of new reference sources for writers and editors who are concerned with preparing texts for publication to the highest possible standard. It’s a specialist dictionary for writers, journalists, and text-editors. It offers rulings on words and spellings which are commonly problematic.

Dictionary for Writers and Editors For instance, do we write Muslim or Moslem, customise or customize? It covers the names of well-known people and places, foreign words and commonly-used phrases such as petit-bourgeois and persona non grata. Entries run from A as a letter or paper size to Zydeco music and Zyklon B.

Many of these items are in any good dictionary, but this one eliminates all the non-problematic words and makes the book easier to use. It also deals with abbreviations, capitalization and punctuation. I looked up amendment [one ‘m’] superseded [yes – it’s spelt with an ‘s’] and manageable [it keeps the ‘e’]. It can also be used as a quick guide to many niceties of writing (the difference between hyphens and dashes) and as a potted source for historical names, dates, and places of importance.

At first glance, there might not seem much difference between this and an ordinary dictionary, but the process of selection and the emphasis on explanations of common problems makes it a very useful resource. This latest edition offers a huge revision and update on the original. Entries have been expanded on doubtful or variable spellings (“gettable” not “getable”); the punctuation of dates and spellings of proper names; and all those other little things that are so difficult to be consistent about when writing. It is also an invaluable guide to words that are often confused such as biannual (twice every year, or every six months) and biennial (every two years).

It is designed to be used in conjunction with New Hart’s Rules, which gives details of how text should be edited in preparation for printing. The headword is set in bold sans-serif, which makes it more immediately legible, though it might seem strange if you are used to the OUP tradition of bold Roman. There are four appendices: mathematical and logical symbols; proofreading marks; a list of diacritical accents; and tables for transliterating Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, and Russian.

It should certainly be amongst the reference tools of anybody who takes a serious interest in writing. The new smaller handbook format is a matter of personal taste, but it certainly looks a handsome little tome flanked by its three cousins.

Dictionary for Writers and Editors   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Dictionary for Writers and Editors   Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.434, ISBN: 0198610408

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