Now that the digital revolution is well underway, is it only a matter of time before printed works become obsolete?

I mean, there are e-books now, electronic versions of many titles you’d normally buy at your friendly neighborhood bookstore, but designed to be used in conjunction with an e-book reader or a PDA. These e-books haven’t really taken off, at least not yet, but they have advantages including easy searching for a particular text string and digital bookmarking.

And of course most newspapers and magazines now offer online versions of their publications that you can surf either for free or for a price.

Even reference books are going digital. You can surf online encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauri, and if you’re tasked with writing something for the boss — or if you’re the boss and don’t want anyone to know you can’t spell — you can even buy digital versions of some well-known and respected dictionaries from Random House. And while these particular beasts require installation onto your computer rather than just being available online, they’re really quite nifty.

I’ve been trying the digital versions of both Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary and Webster’s College Dictionary and was so impressed with how these things work I had to tell you about them.

Available from wordgenius.com, either for download or CD-ROM purchase, once you’ve installed the dictionary onto your PC a little icon called a drag-on (not to be confused with a fire breathing dragon) places itself on your Windows desktop. And this is where it gets slick.

If you’re typing and Microsoft Word, for example, doesn’t have any suggestions for that word with the annoying red squiggly under it, or if you aren’t sure you’ve chosen a word with just the right meaning, you can highlight the word in question and drag it right out of the document and onto the drag-on.

And when you do that, a window pops up virtually instantly, giving you the dictionary’s spelling and definition of that word. It’s so fast you’ll have your answer practically before you release the mouse button!

And it doesn’t just work with Word or other applications like that. You can be surfing a website in your Browser and if you come across an unfamiliar word you can drag it right out of the Browser window and onto the drag-on and the same thing happens. It’s very cool.

You don’t even need to have the entire word to get your digital dictionary working on the case (upper or lower). You can use wild card characters as well, a feature that would come in really handy if you’re spending otherwise productive time working on a crossword puzzle. It’ll also speak the word, kind of, to give you its correct pronunciation, and a View feature lets you change the font and font size to make it easier on your eyes.

I wish I could do that with my printed dictionary now that I’ve been forced to start wearing reading glasses….

On the other hand, now that I have these virtual Websters, I don’t even use the print version anymore. They’re just so darn handy and eager to please! And if you do want a printout, perhaps to prove that you actually did spel, er spell, the word correctly, you can click on the “print” icon and get your evidence the old fashioned way, by killing a tree.

Either of these Webster’s dictionaries is available for $20 U.S. for the download version, or fifty greenbacks for the CD-ROM.

It’s just one more step in what will undoubtedly be a long process that should, one day, actually make printed publications obsolete. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Many mainland Chinese are learning to speak English, but it still can be a difficult country to navigate for foreigners who aren’t familiar with the local language.

But technology is coming to the rescue. Many travelers to China and Taiwan rely on talking electronic devices equipped with English-Chinese and Chinese-English dictionaries that actually do the speaking.

Talking dictionaries can serve as a translator when haggling with a street vendor in Guangzhou or giving directions to a taxi driver in Shenzhen.
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Or say you want a discount on a laptop at a stores in Beijing. You can locate a list of shopping phrases on your hand-held e-dictionary, hit a key and have the device tell the clerk that the item is too expensive. Entry-level models, which start about $100, are adequate for looking up basic definitions and useful phrases.

As technology for hand-held devices improves, portable e-dictionaries have added better features – improved speakers, color screens and better replication of the human voice. Some also are MP3 players or include medical and legal dictionaries, organizers or currency converters.

USA Today business travel reporter Roger Yu, with the help of native Mandarin speaker Connie Tsou, tested four widely available electronic dictionaries.

Now that the digital revolution is well underway, is it only a matter of time before printed works become obsolete?

There are e-books now, electronic versions of many titles you’d normally buy at your friendly neighborhood bookstore, but designed to be used in conjunction with an e-book reader or a PDA. These e-books haven’t really taken off, at least not yet, but they have advantages including easy searching for a particular text string and digital bookmarking.

And of course most newspapers and magazines now offer online versions of their publications that you can surf either for free or for a price.

Even reference books are going digital. You can surf online encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauri, and if you’re tasked with writing something for the boss - or if you’re the boss and don’t want anyone to know you can’t spell - you can even buy digital versions of some well-known and respected dictionaries from Random House. And while these particular beasts require installation onto your computer rather than just being available online, they’re really quite nifty.

I’ve been trying the digital versions of both Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary and Webster’s College Dictionary and was so impressed with how these things work I had to tell you about them.

Available from wordgenius.com, either for download or CD-ROM purchase, once you’ve installed the dictionary onto your PC a little icon called a drag-on (not to be confused with a fire breathing dragon) places itself on your Windows desktop. And this is where it gets slick.

Why search for your “inner child” when there’s an “inner diva” to explore?

And with fewer people riding horses, many refer to “free reign” rather than “free rein,” even if no monarch is in sight, according to Oxford University dictionary researchers.

After six years of labor, linguists have now fed the billionth word into a database as part of an Oxford University Press project designed to track how English is developing in the 21st century. The project looks at which words appear together most often as “collocates,” or in conjunction.

Among the findings: “Men” tend to “assault,” “hijack,” “grin,” “brandish” or “stagger,” while “women” are more apt to “sob,” “cohabit” or “gossip.”

“We’re not saying that’s the way people necessarily behave, but this is typical” in the language, Catherine Soanes, one of the project’s lexicographers, said.

The researchers have found many variations on the term “inner child.” They include, in this order, “inner geek,” “inner nerd,” “inner diva” and “inner dweeb.”

The word “chic” appears in phrases such as “geek chic,” “heroin chic,” “shabby chic” and “retro chic.” Words have been fed into the project’s database since Jan. 1, 2000.

A bad cause

The Oxford University Press, which publishes the 20-volume historical Oxford English Dictionary of some 615,000 words, is conducting the research to update such volumes as the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and the Pocket Oxford English Dictionary. Researchers vacuumed up the billion words by using Internet-crawling software to search academic papers, newspapers and corporate literature, as well as chat rooms and blogs. The billion include many repeated words.

“It helps us find things about the language we haven’t found before,” said Soanes.

The word “cause,” for example, is often defined as to make something happen, “but it’s actually used to make something negative happen, as with accidents or deaths or quite nasty things,” she said. The word’s definition in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary now says: “Make (something, especially something bad) happen.”

‘Free reign’

Many traditional phrases are giving way to alternative terms, the project found. While “free rein” is still used in 54 percent of references, “free reign” now accounts for 46 percent of usage. The term “vocal cords” beats “vocal chords” by a diminishing margin of 51 percent to 49 percent.

Is the Oxford English Dictionary endorsing misspellings based on false associations?

“We don’t make any value judgment about spelling,” said Soanes. “Spelling has never been fixed. It’s always been changing. We have this historical feeling that ‘free reign’ is wrong, but we’re seeing 46 percent doing it. ‘Free reign’ is not going into the dictionary yet, but it may one day take a variant place in the dictionary.”

The increased popularity of “free reign” and “vocal chords” probably starts with people making familiar connections. “People don’t ride horses nowadays, but they’re familiar with a queen’s reign,” Soanes said. “It’s the same with ‘vocal chord.’ People know a ‘chord’ in music, and make the connection.”

In some cases, newer variations have entered the Oxford dictionaries, including “straight-laced,” which is now used 66 percent of the time compared with 34 percent for the traditional “strait-laced.”

Fests and tastics

Finally, a word about endings. “One of the trends in the language is compounding,” Soanes said.

The suffix “fest,” to describe an excess, is most commonly used in “slugfest,” “lovefest” and “gabfest,” the project found.

Other most-used suffixes include “tastic,” as in “poptastic,” “funktastic” and “fabtastic.”

And then there’s “ville,” which is most often used in “nowheresville,” “splitsville” and “dumpsville.”

BYRON TOWNSHIP — Marisa Spetoskey is sure she’s going to get a lot of use out of a recent gift.

“If you’re wondering about how to spell a word, you can look it up, or you can find out what the meaning of a word is,” said Marisa, a third-grader at Countryside Elementary School.

She and 310 other third-graders throughout the Byron Center school district received pocket-sized dictionaries from the Byron Rotary Club.

Bob Sloma, president of J.S. Die &Mold in Byron Township, said one of the Rotary Club’s focuses this year is literacy. Sloma, chairman of the committee that organized the giveaway, said the Rotarians raised about $1,000 from local businesses, which was enough money to provide 600-page, pocket-sized Scholastic dictionaries to the third-graders in public and private schools within district boundaries.

Heidi Morrell, a third-grade teacher at Brown Elementary, said her students were excited to receive the dictionaries.

“A lot of them don’t have updated dictionaries at home,” she said.

Countryside Elementary third-grader Rebecaa Rose said she will use her dictionary when writing to a pen pal.

“You can look up a word if you don’t know how to spell it,” she said.

Sloma said the Byron Rotary Club plans to organize a book collection for the Grand Rapids school district and also will host a literacy poster contest for local fifth- and sixth-graders.

A regulation on dictionary publication came into effect on Monday, asking for an overhaul on the publication sector of dictionaries and other similar reference books to ensure qualifications of relevant publishing houses and quality of their products.

The regulation will effect a nationwide inspection by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) on the quality of dictionaries issued by eligible publishing houses. 　　

Once shoddy products or copyright infringement cases such as plagiarism were spotted, dictionary publication business of relevant publishing house will be “suspended for two years” or even “revoked”, according to the regulation. 　　

The regulation orders a halt of publication and distribution of dictionaries for publishers that have not incorporated the sector in their scope of business. 　　

Dictionaries, which have already got published, can not resume distribution before their quality is acknowledged by the provincial and national press and publication departments. 　　

Those in compilation, however, shall not be published or distributed before the publishers get permit from GAPP to run the business. 　　

The regulation also stipulates that publishing house with at least a senior editor and four editors can apply for the dictionary publication business to GAPP. But all the editors must receive professional training and pass the appraisal sponsored by GAPP before the publishing house starts the business.

BEIJING, May 1 (Xinhua) — A regulation on dictionary publication came into effect on Monday, asking for an overhaul on the publication sector of dictionaries and other similar reference books to ensure qualifications of relevant publishing houses and quality of their products.

The regulation will effect a nationwide inspection by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) on the quality of dictionaries issued by eligible publishing houses.

Once shoddy products or copyright infringement cases such as plagiarism were spotted, dictionary publication business of relevant publishing house will be “suspended for two years” or even “revoked”, according to the regulation.

The regulation orders a halt of publication and distribution of dictionaries for publishers that have not incorporated the sector in their scope of business.

Dictionaries, which have already got published, can not resume distribution before their quality is acknowledged by the provincial and national press and publication departments.

Those in compilation, however, shall not be published or distributed before the publishers get permit from GAPP to run the business.

The regulation also stipulates that publishing house with at least a senior editor and four editors can apply for the dictionary publication business to GAPP. But all the editors must receive professional training and pass the appraisal sponsored by GAPP before the publishing house starts the business.