My friend and colleague, Christine A. Lindberg, is the senior lexicographer for US Dictionaries at Oxford University Press. She writes a weekly column on language for her local paper, the Daily Star in Oneonta, New York. After flying to New York last year to help her wrap up final production of the New Oxford English Dictionary 3rd edition, she wrote this column:
Let’s Look at the Language . . . by Christine A. Lindberg April 23, 2010
A Day in the Life…
Identifying myself as a lexicographer generates responses ranging from puzzled looks to eager questions, from disinterest to fascination, from admiration to almost pity. Whatever the response, one thing is certain: I work in a field understood by few. Not surprising. How many lexicographers do you know? I never met a lexicographer before I became one, 23 years ago. Even since then, I’ve met only about a dozen, and most of them are in Oxford, England.
Lexicography is a world of dictionaries and thesauruses. Apparently this world evokes images of bookish academics whose untroubled lives are supported by the slow-paced vocation of reading and writing about words. One can hear the melodic strains of Brahms in the background as the lexicographer sips on tea and contemplates the symphony of nature outside the library window. What else is there to do? After all, we published a dictionary in 1952. How many more dictionaries does anyone need?
I admit my sarcastic exaggeration, but it’s not that far from impressions expressed to me all the time. It is inconceivable to many that the production of dictionaries and thesauruses is a nonstop activity, often as hectic as an open outcry on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The past month has been particularly hectic, and when deadlines loom, the last thing a lexicographer can afford to be is a “bookish academic.” Although it’s true that our attention to current and correct lexical content is an unending process, it’s also true that for every specific dictionary or thesaurus project, there is a specific delivery date, and any romantic impression about the work schedule of a lexicographer is pure fantasy. Unless one thinks that working 18 consecutive 16-hour days is romantic. Lest you think I’m complaining, let me assure you that I love my job. The passion for it is under my skin, but I’m not oblivious to its lack of glamour. Much of dictionary work is painstakingly mechanical, and as “lofty” a career as lexicography may seem, there is no getting around the “unloftiness” of being in the trenches at deadline.
These trenches can be lonely as the piles of work grow and the days on the calendar shrink. Normally I enjoy working alone in my Edmeston office, but at crunch time I envy my colleagues in England whose trenches are far less lonely. In the last week of March, I finally put up a distress signal. I needed assistance. Assistance from someone familiar with (and unafraid of) dictionary work. Someone with excellent language and proofreading skills, diligent work habits, knowledge of typesetting specs, tireless attention to detail, and just an overall cooperative disposition. Anyone who could satisfy all of that would be a rare find, but I have the remarkable good fortune to know such an individual. Just two days after I phoned her, Debra Argosy, lexicography’s unsung utility player extraordinaire, arrived at my doorstep from Bisbee, Arizona.
For eight days, she worked well past midnight, and her one-of-a-kind remarks throughout these long sessions kept me going. While plodding through pages excessively marked-up by one of those “bookish academic” types, Debra said, “This was supposed to be proofreading, not an invitation for giant brains to spill out on the pages. We should be doing a simple review at this point, but instead we’re scraping the entrails of her brain off of every page!”
I challenge eggheads everywhere to turn a better phrase. Making a dictionary can be a weighty responsibility, but having people like Debra Argosy in the trenches helps to remind me why I love, love, love lexicography.
Edmeston resident Christine A. Lindberg, senior US lexicographer for Oxford University Press, is the principal content editor of Oxford’s American English dictionaries and thesauruses. Opinions expressed by Lindberg in this column are done so independently, and do not necessarily reflect the policies and practices of Oxford University Press.
