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Understanding Dictionary Organization

Guide words at the top of dictionary pages show the first and last word on that page to help the reader quickly locate a word. For example, if looking up the word "science", the reader would find the S section and check the guide words to determine that "science" would be on the page with guide words between "stamp - summer" and not "sandwich - seventy". Understanding how words are alphabetized and using guide words makes finding a word in the dictionary much faster than reading every word on a page.

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25 views22 pages

Understanding Dictionary Organization

Guide words at the top of dictionary pages show the first and last word on that page to help the reader quickly locate a word. For example, if looking up the word "science", the reader would find the S section and check the guide words to determine that "science" would be on the page with guide words between "stamp - summer" and not "sandwich - seventy". Understanding how words are alphabetized and using guide words makes finding a word in the dictionary much faster than reading every word on a page.

Uploaded by

jaikla_m
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Chapter 1

How is a Dictionary
Organized?
Dictionaries are books that list
all the words in a language.
To make dictionaries easier to
use, the words are organized in
alphabetical order. So to use a
dictionary easily, you must know
how to alphabetize words.
Since there are so many words
in a dictionary, guide words are
used to help you locate a word
quickly.

What are guide words?


Guide words are found at the top
of each page. They tell you the
first and last word that is found on
that page.
How do guide words help you
find a word quickly?
Instead of looking at each word on a page,
which could take forever, you just look at
the guide words and then use what you
know about alphabetizing words to decide
if your word would be found on that page.
Let’s see what that means-

Let’s pretend we are looking


up the word, science. First we
would turn to the S section.
Then we would use the guide
words and what we know about
alphabetizing words to decide the
correct page in the S section.
We would look at the guide
words at the top of each page
and decide between which ones
our word would come in
alphabetical order.
Let’s do that for the word
science-
Which one of these pages
would contain the word
science?
science

The page with the guide words-


stamp - summer

Or the page with the guide words-


sandwich - seventy
Chapter 2
Dictionary Definitions
What do they mean?
Have you ever looked up the
definition for a word in the
dictionary?

If so, then you might have been


confused by some of the parts
of that definition.
Today, we’re going to learn
what each part of a definition
means.
This is a definition for flag:

flag (flag)
1. noun A piece of cloth with a pattern
or symbol of a country, an
organization, etc.
2. verb To stop, or to signal. We
flagged down the police officer.
flag (flag)
1. noun The
A piece
wordofbeing
cloth defined
with a pattern
is
or symbol of a country,
followed an
by the pronunciation
organization, etc.
in parenthesis.
2. verb To stop, or to signal. We
flagged down the police officer.
The first word tells the word’s part of
flag
speech
(flag)

1. noun A piece of cloth with a pattern


or symbol of a country, an
organization, etc.
2. verb To stop, or to signal. We
flagged down the police officer.
The next section is the actual
definition of the word.

1. noun A piece of cloth with a pattern


or symbol of a country, an
organization, etc.
2. verb To stop, or to signal. We
flagged down the police officer.
Finally, you might see a sentence
1. noun Ahow
showing piecetheofword
clothiswith
used.a pattern
or symbol
Especially if of
thea use
country,
is notan
the most
organization,
common for theetc.
word.

2. verb To stop, or to signal. We


flagged down the police officer.
Let’s see what you’ve learned!

mischief (miss-chif)
noun Playful behavior that may cause
annoyance or harm to others. My
brother is always up to some sort of
mischief.
book (buk)
1. noun A set of pages that are bound
together.
2. verb To arrange for something ahead
of time. We’ve booked a vacation in
Mexico.
Now you know the
definition of definition!

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