Johnson's Dictionary Online

In recent posts, we’ve been giving you a backstage look at how we are building this online edition of Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language. In this post, we’ll explain how the computer calls up words when you search for them—and why the search results look the way they do. Briefly, our results display follows modern dictionary conventions,...

The chief glory of every people arises from its authours . . . I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations, and distant ages, gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to...

People often ask us something like, “So, you have to get a computer to recognize the words on the page. That’s basically it, right? What else is there to do?” Lots! Here, we explain XML markup.