Macmillan School Dictionary
From EL Gazette, Issue 300, December 2004
Pete Sharma
The Macmillan School Dictionary is the same size as the recent Macmillan Essential Dictionary. Based on the Macmillan Curriculum Corpus, a database containing school textbooks and exam syllabuses, it is designed for studying school subjects in English: biology, economics, maths, music and so on. Labels inform users when a word is specific to a subject and less common in everyday use. A succinct introduction by Michael Rundell describes the background to the research which ensures that the content matches users' needs.
Entries are in red, and noteworthy are the 'menus' which offer an overview of meanings when entries have five or more meanings. Pictures and diagrams are used throughout, befitting the dictionary's academic focus. The contents of the central study skills pages are highly appropriate.