Category: Newsletter

The Middle English Dictionary project Paul Schaffner We at the University of Michigan Library are pleased to report that revision of the Middle English Dictionary https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ and its associated resources has begun, after a 20-year hiatus, thanks to a two-year grant (2016-18) awarded under the Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our hope is that this effort will set in motion a process of ongoing revision, but our immediate goals are to perform only the most urgent updates, publishing as much supplementary information as we can, even when we cannot afford to integrate it fully into the existing online Dictionary. We have been attaching to the appropriate entries additional quotes and notes taken chiefly from two sources: (1) about 20,000 'supplement slips' set aside over decades by the MED editors in hope that an MED Supplement would someday be compiled. These have hitherto lain largely inaccessible in boxes in the university archives. And (2) a...

An Interview with Bryan A. Garner David Vancil Bryan A. Garner earned his undergraduate and law degrees from The University of Texas at Austin, the latter in 1984. Bryan's undergraduate senior thesis was on aspects of Shakespeare’s usage, revealing an interest in English usage that later manifested itself in his many published books. Widely known for his lexicographic accomplishments, Bryan is president of LawProse Inc., which assists with legal writing and provides seminars to improve the writing skills of practicing lawyers. He is also the author of more than two dozen books on writing and legal advocacy. He’s even written a book on the rules of golf “in plain English.” Anyone who has followed Bryan’s career or examined his work will know that he’s an advocate of clear and straightforward written expression. The fourth edition of Garner’s Modern English Usage introduced ratios, based on big data, showing the relative frequency of standard and variant forms of a given usage—a real innovation in lexicography. He’s...

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The latest news includes information about our Publications Committee (PubCom), two Society awards, a gift the Society has recently made, and the dates of our 2019 conference. New Office and Officer in her own words "By day, Brianne Hughes is a technical editor at Bishop Fox, where she ensures the quality of information security reports, develops internal reference materials, and provides ongoing training to consultants. By night, she continues her compound morphology research at EncyclopediaBriannica.com. She has shared her linguistic findings with Ignite Portland, SHEL/DSNA, and Odd Salon. She is a member of the American Copy Editors Society (ACES), is Associate Executive Secretary for the Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA), and is on the board of directors at Wordnik Society, Inc. Brianne received a Masters in Linguistics from the University of York in 2012."   PubCom Wendi Nichols, head of the committee, describes the purview of the committee: In general we oversee the information channels of the Society - the journal, the newsletter, and the website. We advise on books to review...

Kory Stamper’s debut book Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries was published by Pantheon in March and has attracted widespread interest, with appreciative articles appearing in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, and other print and digital media, along with interviews on NPR’s Fresh Air and Here and Now. A review in Publisher’s Weekly describes Word by Word as “A witty, sly, occasionally profane behind-the-scenes tour aimed at deposing the notion of ‘real and proper English.’” David Vancil, a longtime contributor to the DSNA newsletter and former curator of the Cordell Collection of Dictionaries, has published in many fields touching on collections held in the library of Indiana State University. Included in this bibliography are two books he compiled relating to the history of lexicography and four monographs bringing together many of his published poems. Lexicography: Catalog of Dictionaries, Word Books, and Philological Texts, 1440-1900: Inventory of the Cordell Collection of Dictionaries, Indiana State University. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. 397 pp. Incunable Dictionaries: A Checklist and Publishing History. Kevin Jett, editorial assistant. Terre...