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Recently,
a fellow technical writer emailed me with the question, "How do
you choose a dictionary?" She went on to say, "I went to a bookstore
during lunch to pick up a dictionary for my new office. I've never
actually had to do this before. I've always received one as part
of my job, been given one as a gift, or bought one because it
was on sale. As I stood there in front of that huge display of
dictionaries, I realized that I had no flippin' idea how to choose
one!"
I at
first thought hers to be an odd request. After thinking about it,
though, I realized that choosing a dictionary is pretty much like
choosing any other commodity, in that the choice really comes down
to preference. After some thought, I decided I could not recommend
a particular choice for her, but could at least give her an insight
into the way I'd made mine.
My reply:
For
what it's worth, at my company we use "Webster's New Collegiate
Dictionary" as a corporate standard. I don't know why. I have several
at home though, because different dictionaries often assign different
nuances to the same word, and different content altogether in some
cases. Between home and work, I have a current "Webster's New Collegiate
Dictionary", an older "Random House College Dictionary", "Webster's
New World Dictionary" (a little less "modern" in influence), and
a couple of paper pocket dictionaries (one antique dates back to
my high school days). I also have three Spanish dialectical dictionaries,
as well as conversational dictionaries for French, Thai, Mandarin,
Cantonese, Malay, and Tibetan. I have language references for Sanskrit
and Pali, and one for formal Hindi. For good measure, I have acquired
every major flavor of Christian bible with concordances (invaluable
for comparing words and concepts from different translations and
eras), the DSM-IV for psychiatric/psychological terms, and "The
Complete Book of Hip Hop Street Slang." I also own several thesauruses
-- several, because they vary even more than dictionaries in slant
and content. My current collection is rounded out by two rhyming
"dictionaries" and a couple of quote books.
With
all that, there are still some words and usages I can't find. For
an experiment, you might try to find a definition for "ruck" using
the word in the context of: "His hair was rucked back." (Thanks
to "The Shipping News" by Annie Proux for sending me on that particular
quest.) Or, find a definition for "tump" that encompasses the usage,
"The ride was going fine until a hidden rock tumped me and my wagon
over." As a child growing up in the South, we tumped, and got tumped,
a lot; as an adult, when I used "tump" in a short story I workshopped
at Johns Hopkins, not only did no one believe I hadn't made up the
word, but I couldn't find a dictionary to corroborate my claim that
is was a colloquialism.
To answer
the original question, though: If someone else were buying, and
money were no object, I'd probably just get the complete Oxford
English Dictionary on CD. That's a lot of reference material to
stuff away in a laptop bag. But even with that, I'd bet I'd still
have to visit my old paper collection from time to time, anyway,
for just the right verbal touch.
Copyright
© 2000 Dan Everman. All Rights Reserved.
In addition to his day job as a Technical Writer, Dan Everman
is finishing a novel, writing short stories, and experimenting
with poetry. His hobbies are reading, movies, motorcycles, computers,
and creating existential crises for himself.
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