“For most of its life, the dictionary has been limited by alphabetical order. That was the default way to navigate through the text … so if you wanted to see all the terms for, say, a loose woman that were used in the 19th century, with a couple of clicks you could get all that information. It helps unlock the dictionary in a new way.”
As publishing moves more and more into electronic formats, print copies of resources like the dictionary find themselves in uncertain territory.
At the Chronicle, Jennifer Howard speaks with Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s primary editor, who is confident the move to digitalized dictionaries is an exciting one. Speculating on the future, other editors comment on whether or not print copies of their dictionaries will exist at all, as in the case of Macmillan Education.
Macmillan’s Editor in Chief, Michael Rundell claims, “Exiting print is a moment of liberation, because at last our dictionaries have found their ideal medium.” Merriam-Webster is launching an online subscription only reference, which will offer the unique opportunity to choose how readers encounter the text, freeing “users from the straightjacket of the alphabet.”
