The Compact Oxford English Dictionary

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Trying to read the text with the provided glass you immediately see that the magnification factor is inadequate. The diameter of the reading magnifier is 60 mm and I think that if it were at least 80-100 mm it would provide a sufficient level of magnification for young readers like me in my early 30's. I can read the text but from dangerously up-close and that doesn't do it for the eye muscles on extended periods of reading like I'm used to. For those over 50, I'll say that even that wouldn't be enough and they'll have to move to 120-150 mm diameter magnifier. I have no comment for the binding. Although it is both glued and sown it should provide enough resistance through time and usage. Remember, this is a 20 volume book squished into one (more on that in a moment). The print will be small. I have nearly perfect eyesight though and having arrived off a long-haul flight the other day to find this waiting for me, I must admit that tiredness did indeed necessitate use of the magnifying glass. However, I just tried again and can read it just fine in good light without any artificial aid.

The quality of the paper is good but not good enough! For a text that is in the micrometer range (lower than 1 mm for a letter) when you blow it up you see all the print errors and the bad paper. The paper quality at this level should have been that used in art reproductions albums and not that used for e.g. the Shorter OED. This is one very important aspect. Updates to the OED". Oxford English Dictionary. Archived from the original on 11 October 2018 . Retrieved 27 October 2018. The fact is that this edition, in my opinion, is a bibliophile's paradise, coupled with the feel of moving the magnifier through the columns to read giving it as one of the commentators had correctly assessed it as an archaic feel. This idea of reading a diminutive text, magnified through optical means, appeared in Dune for the Orange Catholic Bible- my favorite SF magnum opus. But the concept of looking for a word in the digital age (of course I also own a tablet PC) in one of the 20 volumes would have been ridiculous, at least to me. When I look in the Shorter I sometimes forget that it's a 2 volume edition and when another word pops into mind I go sometimes to the end of it before realizing in horror that that word starts with a letter from the other paired volume. If it's annoying (to use an euphemism here) with 2 volumes you can imagine how it would feel with 20. It would defeat the purpose and it would have made me at least migrate to the digital version. I would NEVER buy the 20 vol. version regardless of low or high costs.

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Brown, Lesley, ed. (1993). The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-861134-9. Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series Volume 1 ( ISBN 978-0-19-861292-6): Includes over 20,000 illustrative quotations showing the evolution of each word or meaning. Writing academic essays and research papers can be more complex than it already is when you don’t know how to cite the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Holmgren, R.J. (21 December 2013). "v3.x under Macintosh OSX and Linux". Oxford English Dictionary (OED) on CD-ROM in a 16-, 32-, or 64-bit Windows environment. Archived from the original on 6 July 2014 . Retrieved 7 June 2014.

Brewer, Charlotte (8 October 2019). "Oxford English Dictionary Research". Examining the OED. The project sets out to investigate the principles and practice behind the Oxford English Dictionary...

Institutional access

The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, as well as describing usage in its many variations throughout the world. [2]