Output details

Marks, spaces and boundaries

This research draws on a body of printed English dictionaries from the 17th century to the present day to consider how punctuation - in a wide sense of elements that divide a text - has been used to structure and clarify dictionary entries and to encode information. This is traced across the development of dictionary structures in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which relied on increasingly complex encoding systems using abbreviations, punctuation and symbols. It is argued that two recent trends have emerged in dictionary design: to eliminate punctuation, reduce abbreviations and also to use a larger number of fonts, so that the boundaries between elements are indicated by font change, not punctuation. The output of this research also presents the design implications of lexicographical practice to a wider audience.