Lexicography

Lexicography is two things

• Practical lexicography is the art or craft of writing dictionaries.

• Theoretical lexicography is the theory or scholarly discipline[?] of analyzing and describing dictionaries.

A person devoted to lexicography is called a lexicographer (which see for a list of some famous lexicographers).

Even though wikipedia is not a dictionary, both of these topics should be most interesting to wikipedians, especially since the art or craft of writing an encyclopedia does not yet have an established name of its own.

There seems to be a discussion of the definition of lexicology. Some use that word as a synonym for theoretical lexicography, others use it for a branch of linguistics pertaining to the treasure of words in a particular language.

Most English lexicographers would find interest in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

Introductory books to lexicography:

• Landau, Sidney, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, 2nd ed., 2001
• Bejoint, Henri, Modern Lexicography: An Introduction, 2000
• Hartmann, R. R. K., Teaching and Researching Lexicography, 2001
• Hartmann, R. R. K., Dictionary of Lexicography, 1998
• Oio, Vincent Ooi, Computer Corpus Lexicography, 1998

See also: Monolingual learner's dictionary