ENCARTA World English Dictionary News & Views Book Review

by Al Brown Al Brown is a senior editor at Oki Data, a senior member of STC, and a junior member of AARP. Originally published in News & Views March 2000 issue. Copyright 2000 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

Is this the latest salvo in Bill Gates' bid for a monopoly on the English language? (For up-to-the-minute news from the Resistance, see the Letters column of the February issue of Intercom.) The publication of a reference work of this scope - more than 2,000 pages, including over 100,000 entries prepared by over 320 experts, based on a fifty-million-word database - is a major event. The fact that it bears Microsoft's Encarta trademark is nothing short of startling. What is the name of the best-selling multimedia CD-ROM encyclopedia doing on the dead-tree edition of a dictionary? Any new reference work has some kind of agenda. The EXCARTA Dictionary aspires to document English as a global language, the lingua franca of technology in general and the Internet in particular, not just the language of America or Britain. This is why it includes entries such as "Registrar General" (a Canadian provincial official), and a biographical entry on Imram Kahn, a Pakistani cricket star. And while we're on the subject, the entry for "wicket" includes a labeled drawing and more information on its role in cricket than the "home plate" entry does about baseball - that definition assumes that you know what game it's used in. In fact, this world English dictionary has a distinctly American bias. Even though it lists British spellings - "colour" and "honour" - the primary entries are under the American spelling. The definition of "wide receiver" doesn't take into account the fact that for most of the world, "football" means "soccer." The dictionary betrays a more subtle partiality toward the anglophone world. For example, it contains a selected list of Internet domain names; the only country domains included are those that have English as an official language. In his introductory essay on World English, Tom McArthur comments, "The English language has become a global resource. As such, it does not owe its existence - or its future - to any nation, group, or individual." A noble sentiment, but one not entirely embodied in this book. In spite of occasional political inconsistencies, the ENCARTA Dictionary is accurate and well designed. Quick definitions, in bold type, provide a brief summary of a word's definition; this makes it easy to scan a long entry to find the sense of a word you're looking for. Word key sidebars give additional information on word origins, usage, and cultural notes. They walk a fine line between political and grammatical correctness: "impact" - use it only if you mean it; "niggardly" - there's nothing technically wrong with the word, but avoid using it to stay out of trouble. It's a sound dictionary, and contains enough information on current technology and culture to serve as the foundation for any technical communicator's reference library. As far as I can tell, Microsoft's involvement in this dictionary consisted solely of providing the name. The company appears as one of the "International Publishing Partners," but I detected no insidious influences on its content. It seems that Microsoft wants to establish ENCARTA as a prestige brand of reference work on a par with Merriam-Webster and the Encyclopedia Britannica. That still means paper. If you're in the market for a doorstop dictionary, this one certainly reflects the spirit of the turn of the millennium. ENCARTA World English Dictionary, Anne H. Soukhanov, U.S. General Editor. St. Martin's Press 1999. ISBN 0-312-22222-X $50.

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Last updated: May 10, 2000 (mvh)