'Oxford English Dictionary' May Go All Digital
Oxford University Press, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, said Sunday that it's uncertain whether the 126-year-old dictionary's next edition will be printed in book form. The publisher said many people prefer to look up words using its online product.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
Look up the word obsolete in a few years, and you could find an example: the Oxford English Dictionary print edition. The complete OED, as it's affectionately known, now gets 2 million hits a month online. The print version, a 20-volume behemoth, sells only about a thousand a year. So the head of Oxford University Press now doubts the next edition of the OED will be offered in the form of a book.
It's MORNING EDITION.
Copyright © 2010 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.