Will the venerable Oxford English Dictionary (OED) become a thing of the past? No, but it is likely to become incorporeal.
A spokesperson for Oxford University Press told the Oxford Times, in response to a story in the Telegraph contending the next edition of the OED will be all-digital, that “No decision has yet been made on the format of the third edition. It’s likely to be more than a decade before the full edition is published and a decision on format will be taken at that point. Lexicographers are currently preparing the third edition of the OED, which is 28 per cent complete. No final completion date is yet confirmed.”
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Nothing demonstrates the change more than the fact that the publishers of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has removed hyphens from 16,000 words in its latest edition. For the most part, the dictionary dropped hyphens from compound nouns, which were unified in a single word (e.g. pigeonhole) or split into two (e.g. test tube), according to a report by Reuters.
Is there a rule you can apply to know if words have been unified or split? Nope. You’ll need to look up each word in the two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary to know for sure.
Text messaging and other influences have contributed to some of the worst writing habits imaginable, including the failure of people to use capitalization and punctuation.
Sadly, that style is intruding into everyday communication. Many people ignore an e-mail that is a lowercase wall of type with no periods or paragraph breaks.They just don’t want to put for the effort to try to read such messages.
The word “Bible” is a proper noun and is always capitalized when it refers to the book we love and seek to obey. Sloppy writers spell the word “bible” out of ignorance. Bigots also like to spell it in lower-case out of meanness, since they believe doing so diminishes the power and influence of the 1.9 billion Christians world-wide who read and revere the Bible.
However, Christians should always spell it properly by capitalizing the word. Make it a point to correct others when you see them misusing the word.
No need to capitalize the word if something is referred to as, “the cooking bible” or the “car owner’s bible.” When used in this way, the word bible is descriptive and not a title, thus not a proper noun.
By the way, the word “biblical” (as in, “He took a biblical studies course.”) is not a proper noun either, and is not capitalized.
