Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Summarization

How does a word get in the dictionary?

Dictionary staff track the usage of the word: how it's used and how often it's used. They also spend around 2 hours a day reading modern texts and writing down possible candidates of new words. They also study variations on words that already exist and variations in usage. Then it is put on a piece of paper as a citation. The citations include information about the word. Once there are enough citations for a word or variant, then it is put into the next edition of the dictionary. Another way is that if a word appears all at once due to some huge event, it is included, too.

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