Part 2: The Myth of the Online Dictionary
So (as several of you have asked in the comments, with varying levels of plaintiveness) why don't dictionaries just go completely online, and include every word? There'd be none of this stupid in-or-out waffling on the part of the lexicographers; they could just muster the words in an orderly fashion and march them onto the web, break for a long lunch, and go home early.
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of this include-everything-on-the-web idea. I'm seethingly impatient for it. I want it hot, fresh, and now, and I'm grumpy that I don't have it yet.
Don't have it yet? But what about OED.com, dictionary.com, onelook.com, bartleby.com, m-w.com, Wiktionary, OmegaWiki ... there's no shortage of dictionaries you can see online. What there's a shortage of is true Online Dictionaries.
A dictionary online is just a print dictionary translated to the web, with little, if any, attention paid to the advantages of web delivery. A few links, a couple of different font options -- that's it. The basic arrangement, format, layout ... those remain largely unchanged. (A couple of the online dictionaries don't even allow full-text search inside definitions! So if you can't remember the word, you can't triangulate it by looking for words you think might be used in its definition.)
Everything in the dictionary-online is still seen through the lens of print, and what print needs. The web is an afterthought. Even the wiki-style dictionaries (which I am all in favor of, and I'm on the advisory board of the Wikimedia Foundation) are largely based on print ideals of organization and inclusion. (Even Wiktionary wants words to be at least a year old before they are included in the project.)
A true Online Dictionary would be created with the web in mind. And it might not look the way we think a dictionary "should" look at all!
Print dictionary layout is optimized (or possibly ossified) for print delivery. Dictionary layout has remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years: look at a page of Johnson's Dictionary, and you recognize it immediately: "That's a dictionary." But is that format, time-tested as it is, the best one for an online dictionary? I am not convinced it is. But no dictionary that I'm aware of is testing what a true online dictionary would or should or could look like.
Not only do I think the macrostructure of the dictionary will have to change online, I believe the microstructure of the entry probably will too. Do lexicographers still need to be crafting tight little knots of definitions if the pressure to explain everything in three lines or less is no longer there? Where's the sweet spot between "short, but impenetrable" and "too long for quick comprehension ... okay, now you're an encyclopedia"?
Because lexicographers' time isn't infinite, even if the web seems nearly so, they will still have to figure out the process of herding all the words into the new online dictionary. (I can see entries accreting over time as evidence of use piles up; the first embryonic uses of word barely showing, with only one or two lonely examples, and the older words becoming like huge dripping stalactites as they accumulate hundreds of examples. You could gauge the longevity of a word by the shape of its entry.)
Before we can have a real Online Dictionary we have to figure out how people will use it, what they really need and what they simply want. Then we can figure out what it will look like, how it will behave, and what it should contain.
We also need to figure out how we can fund it. How will people pay for online dictionary content, if at all? Per word micropayments? Subscriptions? A tiered subscription with basic words being free, but harder or rarer words costing more? Paying a fee through their ISP? Taking it not-for-profit and being funded by grants? Advertising? Charging people to add their own words or definitions? (I'm just kidding about that last part, but I can imagine some people wouldn't be.) Pretty much the only funding option not available for the online dictionary is putting it between hard covers and selling it for $24.95 in Barnes and Noble ... because then you have to make the online dictionary with print in mind.
The true Online Dictionary is still a myth, sadly. But every day I think about how to make it into reality.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Guestblogging Dictionary Myths:
- Why Inartful Isn't In
- Inartful:
- Guestblogging Dictionary Myths:
- Lexicographer Erin McKean Guest-Blogging:
I know it's not what you would call an "online" dictionary, but isn't this effectively what Merriam-Webster offers now, with access to their Collegiate dictionary free, but access to the Unabridged dictionary by paid subscription?
As for the second part of Erin's post, I think it's no different than any other business that went digital. You plunge in and hope for the best, be it for-profit or not-for-profit. If you build it, they will come ... or not. But that's a perfectly normal business risk.
I remember as a schoolkid we discovered how circular dictionary definitions could be -- defining words in terms of other words which were defined in terms of the words we were looking up in the first place. I imagine a hyperlinked dictionary would make this even more obvious.
Wittgenstein had a lot to say about that. Pretty well established that that's the way it is and that's the way it's going to be. But yes, hyperlinking could make all sorts of things obvious. A frequent complaint about searchable databases is that it eliminates the serendipity inherent in flipping through entries. Liberal use of hyperlinks re-introduces it but in a different form.
Your business is to paint the souls of men--
Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke . . . no, it's not . . .
It's vapour done up like a new-born babe--
(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)
It's . . . well, what matters talking, it's the soul!
Give us no more of body than shows soul!
David -- the database underpinnings aren't hard to imagine, you're right. They're pretty bog-standard (and most dictionaries are already XML-tagged for editing). The hard part, I think, is really understanding what people need from a dictionary and delivering it, instead of just presenting them with the same information they've always gotten, only now faster! With animated icons! That is not going to be worth the new-business-model risk.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Ads, grants, donations, and other non-retail mechanisms will inevitably fund future repositories of information like this.
BTW, the idea noted above for a link to an audio file with the pronunciation was also my first idea when you mentioned the ways that current online dictionaries fail to export the medium.
To make it catch on outside a small circle, you'd need to combine it with two other great passtimes, television and gambling.
Anyone can make up a word and pay $2 and it goes in the dictionary. The first time someone on MTV or CNN uses your word, you get $1000.
It'd be a hoot.
I'm not sure if this would clarify the question of what people want from dictionaries.
What do we do with a word like parker (one who parks)?
British: Pahkah.
American: Parker.
Boston: Parkah.
Just an example, but a choice must be made between presenting one standard, or dialects in the audio. And if the answer is dialects (which I think it must), which and how many to present.
Also, since we are speaking of "A New English Dictionary based upon Historical Principles", do we eliminate words (or move them to some special link) when they have not been recorded in use for some period of time? Actually such a link might provide something that is not available in print. I presume the various editions of the NED/OED have removed words, not just added to those recorded earlier. I doubt many people are going to have copies of the different editions to compare if this is true.
By the way, I don't use the online OED just because one must pay to do so.
(Sometimes I do like knowing the etymology of a word and a good site for that is lacking. It would also be cool to have a dictionary where you could set the date of definition. In other words, you could tell it to give you common definitions of words in, say, 1776.)
Actually, you can get access to that free, if you only look at an ad.
Roll your eyes and vote thumbs down when necessary, but don't ignore it.