Dictionaries
With Anne H. Soukhanov
General Editor of the Microsoft Encarta Dictionary
Tuesday, July 2, 2001; 2 p.m. EDT

How will bound dictionaries compete during the Internet age? How does one go about putting a dictionary together? What is the difference between effect and affect?

Anne H. Soukhanov, U.S. general editor of the Microsoft Encarta Dictionary, will be online to take questions and comments.

A transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Anne H. Soukhanov: Hello to everyone who is interested in dictionaries, words and the new Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary.

Del Ray, Va.: Were you always interested in words? Have you read your dictionary cover to cover?

Anne H. Soukhanov: Yes, I have always been interested in words. I learned the alphabet as a small child by playing with the thumb index tabs on Webster's New International Dictionary Unabridged. I was three years old at the time. I have read dictionaries from cover to cover several times during the production process, i.e. copy editing, cross-referencing and final proofreading.

Washington, D.C.: What is your favorite word? Least favorite?

Anne H. Soukhanov: Favorite word is Mamou. It probably comes from Louisiana French and it is a place name for a small town at which the first true Mardi Gras occurred. Mamou is used in lowercase lessons in "it is the big mamou when you get a good book review in the Washington Post." The word works in English like "the big Kahuna," which is another favorite of mine. It comes from Hawaiian meaning a sorcerer or a guru or an expert. I am neutral as far as having a least favorite word, but as a group I dislike derogatory words.

Arlington, Va.: Do you think that the average user will still have and/or need a hard copy dictionary in 20 years? It seems to me that the internet and digital storage devices will eradicate the need for such a large book.

Anne H. Soukhanov: People over the years, ever since personal computers became so readily available, have predicted the end of the bound book. I don't believe this ill be the case because a great number of people still rely and will continue to rely on the printed page as well as the very handy computerized versions of reference products. The two actually complement one another.

There are times when people need a dictionary when a computer is not at hand or when they do not want to click on a computer. Perhaps they are working on a story or an essay and it simply easier to flip a page in the dictionary or the need a pronunciation. Lots of people still write their material out on longhand and choose words using a thesauri before keying into a computer. After keying it into the computer they might go to a spell check and grammar check and perhaps proof read it again. I believe we have very many work settings in which people may use an electronic dictionary totally, a bound dictionary totally or both.

Washington, D.C.: Ms. Soukhanov-- Some people get upset when a new word is added to the dictionary that they do not believe should be there -- for instance "D'oh!" or "ain't." They think that the dictionary publishers are caving in to those who use improper English. Two questions -- First, at what point does a new word become sufficiently popular to include in the dictionary? Next, to what extent do dictionary publishers add new words based on what they consider "proper" English? There must be a difference between adding a brand new word, and adding or changing the definition of a word that already exists -- for example, if 90 percent improperly used "affect" instead of "effect," would the dictionary's definition of these words reflect this change in usage? Thanks!

Anne H. Soukhanov: Let me start with question two -

Just because 90% or even a smaller percentage use word improperly such as using "affect when Effect is called for, or using the bogus word irregardless, this is no mandate for dictionary editors to cave into the population's misusage and validate such usage. As a matter of fact the Microsoft Encarta Dictionary devotes a great deal of attention to usage and abusage of English. At the word affect we have quite a detailed usage note explaining the difference in use between the two words and at irregardless we have a label stating that it is nonstandard. We state that it is a double negative and people should always avoid it and instead say regaurdless or irrespective. Though it is not a legitimate word, electronic and print dictionaries contain the word with appropriate warnings with usage note, label or red underline. People use it so much that we have to enter it to warn them not to use it. Non the less, this is not a cave in this is a battle.

As to question number one -

Dictionary editors need to see four or five years worth of a new term before it gains entry into a dictionaries. By wide spread use I mean in various reputable print and electronic sources. There are exceptions however. If a word bursts onto the linguistic landscape with great social or international repercussions attached to it it can gain entry into dictionaries almost overnight. An example in the 1950s was the word Sputnik. This word was of course associated with the cold war U.S. Soviet Space race so it made its way into the dictionary almost immediately. The word AIDS is another example. It was first recorded in 1982 when the CDC first name d the malady Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - hence AIDS. A recent new word that gained immediate acceptance was the word dotcom, sometimes spelled dot-com, and for obvious reasons this word moved into the immediate parlance and is here to stay, market not withstanding.

This new dictionary contains 5,000 new words in various fields that we felt were essential for college students and young professionals in the 21st Century. Many of these words come from the fields of high technology, medicine, business and science, which are the most prolific sources of new words today.

Harrisonburg, Va.: How is your dictionary different from all of the other's out there? What are the different approaches one can have when putting together a dictionary?

Anne H. Soukhanov: This dictionary is very different because of its strong focus on usage. A stronger focus than any other dictionary on the U.S. market. We have 600 usage notes that show our readers how they can use English without incurring their professors' criticism. We have 400 spell checks that explain words that sound alike but are spelled differently such as "hoard" and "horde" and we enter in the A-Z list 700 of the most commonly misspelled words. These misspelled words are set in lighter typeface and lines are drawn through them. Cross-references point the reader to the correct spelling. An example would be the misspelling or "aquire" for the correct "acquire". Another feature we feel is helpful to college students is a long essay on use of the internet in doing research entitled "The Internet as a Research tool" and it explains the basics, evaluating the liability of sources, determining whether the author is an export and unbiased, determining the accuracy and verifiability of the material, determining how current the Web site is, using copyrighted sources in your own work, knowing how to style site and document the sources you use from the web and basic online netiquitte.

Different approaches are determined by the type of readers the dictionaries are designed for. For example, for school level dictionaries, e.g., middle school level, the vocabulary has to be controlled so the words are neither below or too far above middle school reading levels. This rule holds true for all school level dictionaries. For college dictionaries we tailor the dictionary for the college and postgraduate markets, especially the young professional markets. Unabridged dictionaries on the other hand usually contain 500,000 bold-faced words and come out rarely. They are designed for the broadest spectrum on users possible. They come out rarely because of the high cost associated with such enormous works.

Somewhere, USA: Who writes the definitions that appear in dictionaries?

Anne H. Soukhanov: Dictionaries are written by team effort. Editors are usually English Majors with very strong grades in college. Many have advance degrees and quite a few have Ph.D. We have specialists who write pronunciation. We have people who are called definers, these are the people who actually write the definitions that you read. Within this group we have professional definers, these peoples might be specialist in the life sciences, the physical sciences, computer science, engineering, law, medicine, even sports and dance.
We need specialist definers because our language is very complex and no one definer is capable of dealing with this huge language of ours. We also have specialists in word history, etymology and specialists in usage matters - grammarians and linguists. These are just a few, but not all, that work on dictionaries.

Herndon, Va.: Where do you see dictionaries going in 10 years? 100 years? How will they change?

Anne H. Soukhanov: In 10 years I foresee that so-called unabridged dictionaries may not appear in print at all because of the cost associated with manufacturing them and the market price. I predict that unabridged dictionaries and multi-volume dictionaries will be electronic only. In this way they can be updated much more easily and much more cheaply and can be made available to a wider population than would be the case otherwise. I think that school dictionaries will become much more computer oriented in that more computerized updates will be available to school systems private and public. I believe that the so-called adult dictionaries, i.e. college and the Encarta World English dictionaries, will continue in print because of the ways those dictionaries are used by the people, l who buy them, as I discussed in a answering one of the earlier questions.

Framingham, Mass.: Do you usually use big or exotic words in your everyday life? Does this annoy friends and family?

Anne H. Soukhanov: No, I avoid $50 words!

Alexandria, Va.: I bet you all are having fun with Bush in office! Any chance we'll see "misunderestimate" in a dictionary soon?

Anne H. Soukhanov: Not a chance!

Mr. Bush, as do many menders of the print and broadcast media, is guilty of blunder number one is usage, identified in the top ten usage blunders in English today by our forty one-member college usage advisory board on the dictionary. Blunder number one is the use of the word of there as an invariable singular subject of a sentence as in this direct quote from Bush, "There's a lot of opinions" from an AP story of March 11, 2001. But I can also give you a similar sentence from a major television reporter from June 6, 6:35 p.m. A well known Capitol Hill correspondent stated "there is bitterness and infighting." In both of those sentences "there" is not the subject at all. The subjects are plural.

So don't "misunderestimate" the ability of the media to make the same kinds of mistakes as El Presidente makes.

Lincold, Neb.: Do you think that the internet has tweaked the English language at all?

Anne H. Soukhanov: Yes it has, for example we felt the need to enter the lowercase abbreviations of countries that appear in email addresses, such as "mh" for Marshall Islands. We have also felt the need a number of acronyms that are used as Internet shorthand such as HOAS, for hold on a second.

Anne H. Soukhanov: Thank you all so much. All of these questions were great, and I am only sorry that we didn't have enough allotted time to answer every one. This is great and has been fun!

washingtonpost.com:

That was our last question today. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.

Stay tuned to Live Online:

Carolyn Hax at 3 p.m. EDT
Starry Eye Astrology at 7 p.m. EDT

Keep up with the latest in news, sports, politics and entertainment with washingtonpost.com e-mail newsletters.

NEW! Personalize your Post with mywashingtonpost.com. Get customized news, traffic, weather and more.

   |       |