ODWE - second edition (2000)

Second edition 2000
Published by Oxford University Press

This latest edition has a greatly increased format: 234mm x 156mm (9½ × 6¼ inches). This is partly in recognition of the need to accommodate more information and wider cover in works of this sort, and partly owing to the general trend away from so-called ‘pocket books’ for works of reference.

The demise of OUP’s printing works in 1988 meant the title of Printer to the University was defunct. The Clarendon Press imprint was also subsumed into the larger Oxford University Press imprint in 1998.

Click here for a pop-up image of the dustjacket (30k).

EDITOR’S NOTE

This dictionary is a completely expanded, revised, and updated edition of the original Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, first published in 1981. That work was itself successor to eleven editions of the Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary, originally published under the editorship of F. Howard Collins in 1905—at which time it was considered to be the first style-book of its kind to have been produced in any country. This edition is designed to be used in conjunction with Hart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers (thirty-ninth edition, 1983, to be revised and enlarged as The Oxford Guide to Style, available in spring 2001), as well as with The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage (revised third edition, 1998), and the New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) or Concise Oxford Dictionary (tenth edition, 1999).

The text is derived from the archives, experience, and practical knowledge of Oxford University Press, especially the Oxford English Dictionary Department and the former Arts & Reference Desk-Editing Department. It also represents the accumulated experience and wisdom of countless people throughout the many editions of this work’s precursors. As such my first debt of gratitude is to the generations of compositors, editors, academics, proofreaders, and authors whose labour established and moulded the material included in this book, and whose influence endures on every page. I should like also to thank the many people associated with the Press and University who have generously shared their considerable talents in many areas, in particular Bonnie Blackburn, Edwin and Jackie Pritchard, J. S. G. Simmons, Della Thompson, George Tulloch, Hilary Walford, and John Was. I am grateful to Barbara Horn for her editorial assistance in the unenviable task of thoroughly revising and streamlining the text at galley stage.

In creating this new edition I have been fortunate in being able to draw upon the extraordinary range and depth of knowledge of my colleagues at the Press, many of whom have taken considerable time and trouble to help me over the years. In particular I thank Elizabeth Stratford, Milica Djuradjevic, Enid Barker, Cyril Cox, and Mick Belson, all of whom represent an irreplaceable source of editorial expertise. Here I must single out Leofranc Holford-Strevens, whom it has been my great good fortune to count as both colleague and friend, and who has remained a patient and tireless fount of knowledge for this book in particular and OUP in general: in doing so he amply fulfils the role of a Laudian ‘Architypographus’.

Finally-and most importantly—I thank my wife Elizabeth who, while this book was in preparation, endured (with varying degrees of good humour) passive exposure to eight years of editorial ephemera; and my children Olivia, James, and Theodore.

RMR

Michaelmas Term, 1999
Oxford

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