IT and society: Internet may phase out printed Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford University Press announced that so many people prefer to look up words using its online “Oxford English Dictionary” that it is uncertain whether the dictionary’s next edition will be printed on paper at all. A team of 80 lexicographers are preparing the third edition of the dictionary, which is just one-quarter finished.

Among the indisputable advantages of the digital version of the Oxford English Dictionary are entries’ updates.

OED, whose history spans more than a century, is the most authoritative explanatory English dictionary, which includes more than 290,000 entries.