Posted on 08/29/2010 5:09:06 PM PDT by Stoat
It was first published 126 years ago and is respected the world over.
But the Oxford English Dictionary will never appear in print again, its owners have announced.
Instead, the 80 lexicographers who have been working on the third edition for the past 21 years have been told the fruits of their labour will exist solely online.
The OED has been available on the internet for the past ten years and receives two million hits a month from subscribers who pay £205 a year, plus VAT, to access it.
Oxford University Press says the dominance of the internet means the latest update to the definitive record of the English language - currently 28 per cent complete - will never be published in print.
'The print dictionary market is just disappearing - it is falling away by tens of per cent a year,' said Nigel Portwood, 44, chief executive of OUP.
'Our primary purpose - and this takes a bit of adjusting to - is not profit, it is the dissemination of knowledge,' he said.
'Print is still pretty important round here but, wherever possible, if there is an opportunity, we are moving out of it.'
The printed dictionary has a shelf life of another 30 years, he predicts.
The third edition is only expected to be completed by 2037. The OUP has already stopped producing illustrated reference books because of the growing popularity of the Wikipedia website.
R
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I always dreamed of someday having a copy of the OED in my office.
The red one for the 1962-1968 is a darn good one, although I’ve been using the black one from 1956 more lately. They are more useful than most of the Haynes manuals. And some little white e-book would last about 10 minutes in a mechanic’s environment....
I would imagine so, knowing your appreciation of Shakespeare :-)
For the full depth of word histories and a complete range of contextual usage examples there's really no substitute for the full 20-volume deadtree version. The CD of the 2nd Edition that I have is not only quite poor quality software, it doesn't have anything close to the full range of information included in the printed volumes. It's so nice to be able to have several volumes open at once or to be able to quickly flip between multiple bookmarks in a print volume while doing research....something that's really not the same while working with the expensive online OED subscription site. It will certainly be a loss when the 3rd edition is only available online.
"sigh"
INDEED.
LIke votes . . . he who counts
counts the most.
He who deletes . . . rules the most . . .
until God . . . deletes them from this sphere.
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