Digital vs print: the OED story

With the print dictionary market fast shrinking, the monumental Oxford English Dictionary, the authoritative guide to the English language, may only be available in its subscription-based online form in future, reports The Sunday Times.

It's too early to predict whether digital dictionaries will completely wipe out the printed format and the publisher has no plans to stop bringing out print dictionaries. Still, more and more people are taking advantage of the speed and ease of using the online OED, which charges a subscription fee of $295 a year in the US.

Oxford University Press' decision to discontinue the print edition of the OED explains the increasing popularity of handy dictionary software programmes such as WordWeb, Lingoes, Babylon, etc. and the presence of free online dictionaries including Princeton University's "large lexical database of [American] English" WordNet, Merriam-Webster Online, Google Dictionary and the wiki-based open-content dictionary, Wiktionary. The dictionary plug-in for Chrome browser helps users access the Google Dictionary at a movement of the mouse.

Besides, the CD-ROM version of OUP's own Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 8th edition, is a useful reference tool for the working professional. In addition to Oxford Writing Tutor, it also features an integrated thesaurus, thousands of example sentences and a visual vocabulary builder.

Perhaps the disappearance of the print OED will be mourned by those few who own – and therefore, consult – the multi-volume tome of the century-old lexicon, but the online-only Oxford will make the dictionary accessible to a greater number of users.

Launched in 2000, the online Oxford now gets two million hits a month.


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