Macmillan English Dictionary: Diane Nicholls

Diane Nicholls

Thesaurus Editor

I took a circuitous path to lexicography. After a degree in Russian and French, a postgraduate diploma in translation, a stint as a technical translator, and three years studying for a PhD in Slavonic Studies at Cambridge University, freelance work on the Cambridge International Dictionary of English provided an entrée into lexicography and my first non-user experience of dictionaries. A two-year Research Assistant post in multi-lingual lexical knowledge representation for Cambridge Computer Laboratory followed this, and, in career terms, my fate was sealed.

Since 1995 I’ve worked as a freelance linguist/lexicographer and revelled in the variety and flexibility this role offers. I’ve worked on software development projects as far away as Moscow and California, on academic research projects closer to home and in Hong Kong and the US, and on a wide variety of dictionary publishing projects, including learner corpora, learner, bilingual and native-speaker dictionaries and thesauruses.

For Macmillan, I produced usage notes for the first and second editions of the Macmillan English Dictionary (MED) and was editor of the CD-ROM integrated thesaurus for MED2, as well as contributing to a number of Macmillan’s onestopenglish online resources for both teachers and students. I have enjoyed project managing and editing Macmillan’s In Company, New Inside Out, and Hot Spot courses on CD-ROM and editing and compiling the website components for Macmillan’s secondary courses for Spanish learners of English, Definitions and Voices. Meanwhile, producing the glossaries for the excellent series of Macmillan Readers takes me on a pleasant detour into English literature, while writing two series of articles for MED Magazine has given me a welcome chance to get a few things off of my lexicographical chest.

I live in Rye, East Sussex, and when not at my desk, can usually be found either enjoying the coast and countryside around Rye or the wealth of great pubs and restaurants in Rye, often with my dog, Bob, in tow.