I’m old enough to have used paper dictionaries and yet I don’t miss them.
Today I have a dictionary of every language I speak in my pocket.
The serendipity of using paper dictionary exist online. Some dictionaries (like Merriam Webster show neighboring words). Others shows random words. Many offer to subscribe to a word of the day via email or an app.
If anything I find serendipity to be greatly improved by hyperlinks. The dictionary is this flat shallow lexicographically ordered collection of word definitions. It can’t compete with the depth of the internet.
Wikipedia is a lot better than any paper encyclopedia I have used. It is updated with recent events. And following links you can go from rabbit hole to rabbit hole effortless. I have spent countless hours on topics I did not even know anything about in this fashion.
I think nostalgia gives people pink colored glasses that really distort reality. I have not owned a paper dictionary I over a decade and I really don’t miss it.
Yet I still quite regularly refer to our Shorter Oxford (3 - 4k A4 pages). Usually after failing to get a correct or adequate answer online. It gives far more definitions, etymology and usage than any and every online resource. For dictionaries, the internet has no depth, just a barely scratched surface. Somewhat equivalent to a simplified school or pocket dictionary - at best.
I've probably spent as much time down paper encyclopedia rabbit holes as Wikipedia. Both have their pluses which can't be easily replicated in the other. Same for dictionaries.
Something that came up in a recent discussion on Encarta: I have a century old encyclopedia set - the fact it is not constantly updated makes it a fascinating piece of history. Sometimes with better - manual - shortcut ways of calculating that I never heard of in my schooling, and a glimpse of skills that have declined. Reading about steam engines while they were still cutting edge, etc. I've learnt all sorts of little bits of history none of the many history books I read and Wikipedia time I've spent have ever got near.
Having a snapshot is as useful, but differently useful, to having an always updated resource.
That needs a subscription, does it not? What is available are some of the full entries for just a small selection of the words.
e.g. the word of the day on oed.com is "quarterstaff" which gives the full OED entry, but type or click "quartet" or the other linked words, then you're returned to the homepage, and a subscriber login pops up. There's a £90 instead of £200 for a year's personal sub offer on the front page too.
I can buy the Compact Oxford for that. After seeing mention in this thread of its tiny price on Ebay, and a quick search, I may very well spend £20 or £30. :)
It’s still ‘online’ even if you need a subscription!
And you probably have a full access subscription anyway, through your local public library, or maybe your alma mater if you have one, or maybe your employer if it’s a large knowledge organisation.
Find out which institution I belong to has access to oed (which you’re bound to forget unless you’re in the word smithing business and use oed every day) .
Figure out what contorted method this institution used to log in
Remember your usr / password
Reset usr/ password
Figure out what combination of special characters your institution requires for your password
Look up word
Doesn’t support Firefox/ safari!
Fire up chrome
What are the special characters for the password again?
Reset password, etc
I just went on vacation. As I’m heading out I grab my mirrorless digital camera. Then I remember I’ll need the charger. And the SD card is in the card reader upstairs.
So I said, “f*it”, grabbed a handful film and my OM-1.
The free-via-local-UK-public-library access is actually pretty pain-free -- you just click the 'sign in' button, enter your library card number, possibly click a link to tell it which particular local library the card is for, and that's it. There is no password. It's worked in Firefox since forever, and I'm sure it will work in Safari too. It then remembers you're signed in for a bit, and next time around it's even easier because your web browser remembers the library card number and can fill in the field for you.
It's a great resource to have handy. Personally I set Firefox up with a search bookmark so I can just type 'oed wombat' to look up 'wombat'; if you're not signed in it goes through a quick fill-in-the-library-card-number interstitial and then you're straight at the definition.
Interesting. I wasn't aware I could get home access via our library membership. I guess I just assumed I'd have to either visit library, or "virtually" borrow it like with CDs and audiobooks.
Sometimes i think people here really forget something like 200£/year ($324 here) really does make it inaccessible to some people. I've got a copy of the Oxford dictionary I picked up for less than $20 at a used book store. Over $300/year for the same thing really is not an expense I can afford for the luxury of a dictionary.
It's not that it's unaffordable, it's the subscription as "full product cost, every year". I object to the sheer greed of that pricing model. I wouldn't buy a Compact Oxford book set every year, just as I wouldn't buy MS Office every time. That's the price that counts as it's the same content as the full multiple volume OED without the extra paper and bindings. Besides, Office used to get updated every 3-5 years, not annually. Online as means for 500% price increase isn't something I'll ever support, even if I'm easily able. :)
Much as I might like access to the full thing, the book might last me in the home 10-30 years, or life. Now were the sub £20-£30 a year I may well have, while the kids were at school...
Oh, I totally wouldn't recommend paying the subscription (those to whom it is professionally worthwhile won't be seeking my recommendation in the first place). But a significant chunk of the UK population have free access because their local public library system subscribes. That's even cheaper than a secondhand paper dictionary...
I have both the the full and the shorter (the New Shorter in my case) and I've found that I prefer the shorter over both the full Oxford (which I have online) and things like the publicly available MW. It's not a simple abbreviated edition of the full thing.
The full Oxford is a marvellous thing, but in the past decades, the New Shorter has grown to be what I reach for first.
Aye, some of the implicit societal assumptions are rather hard to read, or comical from today's perspective. From the era when Western confidence was probably at its height, there's a presumption in everything that Christianity, Western society and values are the right ones. That empire is a force for good - but quietly not mentioning both sides, or the deprivation caused, and this right after the scramble for Africa. Though King Leopold's "Free" Congo is a catalogue of atrocity, that was infamous even back at the height of Empire building.
Yet see current stories on the Arctic and competing moves to develop and claim it, and it doesn't seem so very different, just who's playing has changed.
Then there's the extensive coverage of anachronisms that have changed hugely or vanished; like the hierarchy of flowers, class, the importance of the King's English (received pronunciation), obsolete medical treatments, crime and punishment and so on.
We can all only speak for ourselves; I bought The Compact Edition of the OED on eBay for a song (postage cost more than the dictionary itself). It comes in two volumes with a magnifying glass, and is now my first stop (ahead of the mighty internet) for looking up a word. Even when the word I want to look up is something I've come across on the internet, and I have the internet at my fingertips. I find the results usually to be significantly more satisfying than looking up the same word online.
I should say it clearly has a different mission, a different audience, to the typical online dictionary (although many online dictionaries do now provide the etymology as a matter of course, which is a big improvement).
That's the edition of the OED that I have. I think this edition is more useable than the newer 1-volume edition, it's a little handier and less unwieldy.
This is understood. That's why the featured author felt a need for the minority opinion to be expressed. There's a general point that needs support, perhaps.
Your criticizm in the end is ad-hominem. As far as the body of the critique is directed at the content instead, without adressing it explicitly, then perhaps because the TFA made an ad-hominem via proxy, without resorting to the meta-level to that you have taken it.
The argument rests on the fact that e.g. a news-paper article would barely invite not just readers' letters but whole discussions. It's rather quaint and not all that hyper. Thus it is kind of ironic and almost self-defeating for the article to be published online (online first I guess). As I have said, the trend is obvious and needs no defense.
1. The experience of flipping through a paper dictionary or book is more-or-less impossible to replicate on a screen. Even the most hyperlink-heavy Internet article is limited in comparison to a book that can be flipped through instantaneously. With hyperlinks, you're necessarily limited to the context of the article.
2. Wikipedia articles are a mile wide and an inch deep and pale in comparison to an actual encyclopedia. Furthermore, they are all written like advertisements. This is easy to see on pages for cities and countries - the introductory paragraph is nothing but accolades, rankings, and tourist attractions. This is a far cry from an actual encyclopedia, which is about data.
> 2. Wikipedia articles (...) pale in comparison to an actual encyclopedia. (...) This is easy to see on pages for cities and countries (...)
I'm not claiming Wikipedia is perfect (they are not claiming this themselves) but in contrast most of the small cities worldwide are not even entitled to get an entry in "actual encyclopedia".
> 2. Wikipedia articles are a mile wide and an inch deep and pale in comparison to an actual encyclopedia.
Do you have any examples? Or is this just a vague impression? There have been studies done about this by neutral outside researchers which found that generally Wikipedia was more comprehensive and more reliable than other encyclopedias.
Take the Vienna page as an example. In the introductory paragraphs, we have the text below. While it isn't incorrect or false, it's quite obviously included only facts that portray the city in the best possible light. If the purpose of an encyclopedia is to present information in a neutral, objective way, this doesn't seem to fit the bill.
I say this as someone who likes Vienna and thinks the quality-of-life studies are correct. But this information belongs in a sub-header, not in the introduction of the article.
Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first (in a tie with Vancouver and San Francisco) for the world's most liveable cities. Between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne.[20][21][22][23][24] In 2018, it replaced Melbourne as the number one spot.[25] For ten consecutive years (2009–2019), the human-resource-consulting firm Mercer ranked Vienna first in its annual "Quality of Living" survey of hundreds of cities around the world.[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] Monocle's 2015 "Quality of Life Survey" ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world "to make a base within."[34][35][36][37][38]
The UN-Habitat classified Vienna as the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013.[39] The city was ranked 1st globally for its culture of innovation in 2007 and 2008, and sixth globally (out of 256 cities) in the 2014 Innovation Cities Index, which analyzed 162 indicators in covering three areas: culture, infrastructure, and markets.[40][41][42] Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is often used as a case study by urban planners.[43]
Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the world's number-one destination for international congresses and conventions.[44] It attracts over 6.8 million tourists a year.
I don't have a printed encyclopedia in front of me at the moment, but for comparison, here's the Encyclopedia Britannica online entry for Vienna. For the most part, it is pretty neutral and objective and has far less marketing-speak than Wikipedia.
When I read this Vienna article, I agree that it has perhaps a bit less marketing speak (although I don't think the two paragraphs from the Wiki Intro you pulled are indicative of the whole article) but it is not any less positive on the city.
In the linked article I think paragraphs 3 and 4 ("Vienna is among..." and "Viennese Lebenskunst...") basically read like they are from a Travel Guidebook on why you should add Vienna to your next itinerary.
I think it also showcases two of the major problems I have with Britannica and most other "old school" encyclopedias:
1. A general aversion to putting dates with facts. For instance the article states that 2 million visitors comes to the city annually. The Wiki article links to statistics from the city that put that number much higher. I understand that the 2 million number may be from some time ago, but I have no way of knowing. My assumption has always been that they do not put dates on things to prevent appearing out of date. They are really good at putting dates on "history" but seem to be much more hesitant on putting dates on "current" information which makes me think that a lot of that "current" information is already "history"
2. Lack of any sort of citations. I do generally trust Britannica, but it would be nice to get information about where they are getting their information.
I found almost all Wikipedia articles I read to be way, way better than the equivalent article in a paper encyclopedia. The most important lemmas get maybe a few hundred words in a paper encyclopedia, whereas Wikipedia articles about relatively obscure topics provide much more detail.
I don't mean to be pompous, but they clearly are not very effective. Every single article on a city is written with a subtle advertorial tone, whether to promote tourism or simply give the city a positive reputation.
I mostly use nontracking search engines, or the build-in dictionary in iOS, so I'm not super worried about the first.
To me, right-clicking is way simpler than pulling a book off a shelf.
Power could I guess be an issue, but I can't imagine writing at this point without using a computer. ;) 30+ years at a keyboard have done a real number on my handwriting, which was never very good to being with.
Today I have a dictionary of every language I speak in my pocket.
The serendipity of using paper dictionary exist online. Some dictionaries (like Merriam Webster show neighboring words). Others shows random words. Many offer to subscribe to a word of the day via email or an app.
If anything I find serendipity to be greatly improved by hyperlinks. The dictionary is this flat shallow lexicographically ordered collection of word definitions. It can’t compete with the depth of the internet.
Wikipedia is a lot better than any paper encyclopedia I have used. It is updated with recent events. And following links you can go from rabbit hole to rabbit hole effortless. I have spent countless hours on topics I did not even know anything about in this fashion.
I think nostalgia gives people pink colored glasses that really distort reality. I have not owned a paper dictionary I over a decade and I really don’t miss it.