Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #303753 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1920 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The aim of this work is to provide a one-stop compendium of information, containing a world-class dictionary, a style guide and an atlas in one volume. The dictionary is an updated version of the 1988 fourth edition of the Collins English Dictionary, itself a standard work in its field. This gives the reader 1,779 pages of text--this is a book that will exercise the body and eyes as well as the brain--combining reliable, authoritative definitions, notes on usage and encyclopaedic and biographical entries. These range from the intriguingly obscure ("duniwassal"--a word for a minor Scottish nobleman, or the information that Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan and had a population of 524,000 in 1994) to new, up-to-the minute entries defining "e-commerce"--business transactions on the Internet; "docu-soap"--a television documentary series in which the lives of the people filmed are presented as entertainment or drama, and "Eurozone" for those countries which have joined the European single currency. The dictionary text is followed by The Times Guide to English Style and Usage, 62 pages of the guidelines used by the staff of The Times to ensure consistency, giving useful advice on such things as grammar, words that should have capital letters and preferred spellings. Finally there is a mini-atlas: 14 maps covering the world, a handy way of sorting out the boundaries of all the new countries that have sprung up since the fall of the Soviet Union and the break-up of Yugoslavia. --Julia Cresswell

Synopsis
This dictionary incorporates "The Times Guide to English Style and Usage". It has encyclopedic entries, a 24-page map section, and deals with the whole range of language from technical to literary, from formal to slang, covering a range of specialist subjects from aeronautics to zoology. The definitions are numbered for ease of use, labelled as necessary, with modern meanings shown first. Included in the dictionary are 16,000 entries for people and places, providing essential facts like dates, works, capital city, population. The dictionary also includes entries for common abbreviations.

Customer Reviews

Excellent reference tool for all writers
The Times English Dictionary is an excellent buy, a comprehensive dictionary with the advantage of the Times Style Guide included in the same book. I write for an British publication and I couldn't work without it.