How to use this dictionary

Using a dictionary can often require a certain amount of skill on the part of the user. This has always been true particularly in the case of a paper dictionary. In an ideal world, of course, the onus would be on the dictionary editors and software to guide the user to the correct translation, rather than on the user to sift through pages of complicated explanations on the format of dictionary entries. One of the advantages of an electronic dictionary is that this onus can indeed shift towards the dictionary. For example:

• Traditionally, few declined forms are included in paper dictionaries, largely for reasons of economy of space;
• An entry in a paper dictionary is often a very "linear" affair: it is cumbersome to include cross references, or "meta" information such as explanations of examples;
• It is often up to the user of a paper dictionary to know the correct spelling of a word;
• A paper dictionary cannot alter the information it gives to suit the use that it believes the user is making of the dictionary;
• Editors of a paper dictionary don't get "live" feedback about how users are actually using the dictionary.

Modern electronic dictionaries such as this site's Spanish/English work are beginning to break with some of these traditional problems. (Actually, one of the weaknesses of electronic dictionaries is that for a long time they have simply aped their paper counterparts rather than providing many new features.) For example, the dictionary can often correct for misspelt lookups and understand practically all declined forms of words. Since information is available to the editor of an on-line dictionary on how users are actually using the dictionary, the content can be improved and re-organised to take this usage into account.

However, the following short notes may help you to make better use of this dictionary:

• how to decide which form of the word to look up;
• how to decide how to interpret the dictionary definition that you get;
• some notes on the Spanish spellchecker built into the Spanish dictionary.

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