Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 7, 1993 TAG: 9311070235
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MIKE MAYO Book page editor
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This wonderful two-volume dictionary is as dangerous as it is useful. It's one of those books that leads readers on. You open it with a specific purpose in mind and then look up after a fascinating 20-minute browse, trying to remember what you were supposed to be doing in the first place. That's the temptation any good reference work presents and this is no exception. All in all, it's a remarkable achievement. Editor and lexicographer Lesley Brown, who's been doing a brief promotional tour for the dictionary in this country, says that work on this "New Shorter" has been going on for 13 years with the participation of some 25 editors handling different sections at different times.
The result of their efforts is 3,776 pages of readable text that define and explain seven and a half million words. The slightly oversized volumes are arranged in a three-column format. Typographer Paul Luna designed the clear print. For anyone who associates an "Oxford" dictionary with those horrible little books that required a magnifying glass and a 300-watt bulb to read, the new edition is a welcome change.
Readers who are accustomed to American dictionaries will find a few differences here. The "New Shorter" tends to group more variations of words under the initial "headword" listing while giving others their own entry. For example, under the headword "fox," "foxglove" is defined as "a tall woodland plant of the figwort family." But "foxtail" has a separate definition on the next page.
To keep the volumes to a manageable size and affordable price, the editors were forced to delete entries from the full- length Oxford English Dictionary. Those cuts were made mostly on archaic terms that have no current use. The space was needed for new words and new usages.
In that regard, the "New Shorter" is about as up to date as any work of this size and scope could be. Such relatively new words as "droog," "psychobabble" and "headbanger" are included. And even though the price might seem steep, it really isn't when you consider that a hardback collection of Stephen King short stories costs $27.50. Isn't a good dictionary more than three times as valuable?
Early next year, the "New Shorter" will be available in computer form on CD-ROM. That may indeed be the wave of the future, but the conventional hardback still has a lot of good years left. As Lesley Brown put it, "Books have an immediate accessibility and portability which, as yet, you can't get in computer form."
She's right, of course, and it seems that her efforts and those of her staff have paid off. The dictionary is selling so well that it's already gone into a second printing.
The late John Ciardi often said "language does what it does because that's the way it does it." The "New Shorter" won't explain everything, but it does show us where the English language is now. These volumes set the standard for popular reference books.
by CNB