Lexicographers compile dictionaries, considering the intended use and type of dictionary. They choose which words to include, how to organize them, and how much information to provide. Some famous lexicographers are Noah Webster and Pierre Larousse.
People who compile dictionaries are called lexicographers. While sometimes considered a branch of linguistics, the art of lexicography is rightfully considered a distinct field. Some are written by a single lexicographer, but many of the most respected and widely used examples today are the work of many individuals.
The lexicographer has many considerations to keep in mind when writing a dictionary. First of all, there are many different types of dictionaries with just as many intended uses. They can simply provide basic definitions, pronunciation, and origins – such as “Greek” or “Old French” – or they can provide more extensive derivations and histories of each term. Some, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, provide textual examples of terms. These books can focus on specific subsets of a language, such as jargon or legal terminology, or they can be used to provide translations from one language to another. The earliest known dictionary, compiled in Latin during the 1st century BC by Verrius Flaccus, listed only archaic and difficult terms.
With the intended purpose of the book in mind, the lexicographer must choose which words to include, how much information to provide for each entry, and how to organize the data. Some aspects of organization seem fairly obvious, such as the literacy of terms in an English dictionary or the categorization of Chinese characters by the number of radicals and strokes, a system known as lexicographic ordering. Literacy dictionaries did not appear in English until the 1640s, however, and earlier ones grouped words by thematic similarity, such as listing all animals together.
There are also more subtle considerations regarding the organization of terms, such as how to treat accented letters. A lexicographer must consider whether some inflected terms, such as “children” in English, are listed alone or included under the uninflected entry or lemma, “child” in this case. In some languages, all words with the same root are grouped together. In English, this would result in words like “important” and “report” appearing under the heading “port” instead of under I and R respectively.
Some lexicographers have become household names, and revised editions of their work are still in use decades after their dictionaries first appeared. The best known of these are perhaps Noah Webster and Pierre Larousse.
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