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General
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Dictionaries
General
Scientific and Specialised
Other Resources
Guides to Usage and Prose Style
Handbooks, Encyclopaedias and other reference works
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Guides to Information Sources
| General Dictionaries |
| The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 1992. Notable for its helpful usage notes, notes on synonyms, and biographic and geographic entries. |
| Chambers Concise English Dictionary. Edinburgh: W&R Chambers;1992 |
| Longman Dictionary of American English. 2nd ed. Harlow, Essex CM20 2JE, United Kingdom: Longman; 1997. |
| Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. Springfield (MA): Merriam-Webster; 1998. Perhaps the best compact desk dictionary for US usage. The appendices include abbreviations and symbols for the chemical elements; compilations of foreign words and phrases, biographic and geographic names, signs and symbols, and a short guide to punctuation, capitalisation, and forms of address. |
| The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Oxford (UK): Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press; 2002. Has some of the characteristics of its 20 volume father, The Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, for example, a generous use of quotations illustrating meaning and usage, but it is up to date in its representation of scientific vocabulary. This would be the best choice for an editorial office wishing to have at least one unabridged dictionary. Contains over half a million definitions and 83,500 illustrative quotations. |
| The Oxford Encyclopaedic English Dictionary. Oxford (UK): Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press; 1991 In addition to the expected coverage of English-language vocabulary, this dictionary is notable for the geographic and biographic entries, and for the extensive treatment of compound terms and phrasal verbs. Many of the appendices present fundamentals of scientific nomenclature and symbolisation. Out of print, limited availability. |
| The Random House Webster's Dictionary of the English Language. unabridged. SB Flexner, editor in chief; IC Hauck, managing editor. New York (NY): Random House; 2003 |
| The Random House Abridged Dictionary. 2nd ed. New York: Random House; 1993 A major US dictionary, notably useful for its illustrative examples of usage, definitions of phrasal verbs, and suggestions of synonyms. |