Sharp The New Oxford American Dictionary Oxford American Thesaurus of Current English ELECTRONIC DICTIONARY PW-E350 - Manual (Page 40)

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• present participles dropping a final silent e and adding -ing to the stem, e.g.,
change → changing; dance → dancing
Other forms are given in the dictionary, notably for:
• verbs that inflect by doubling a consonant, e.g., bat → batted, batting
• verbs ending in - y that inflect by changing -y to -i, e.g., try → tries, tried
• verbs in which past tense and past participle do not follow the regular - ed
pattern, e.g., feel → past and past participle felt; awake → past awoke; past
participle awoken
• present participles that add - ing but retain a final e (in order to make clear that
the pronunciation of g remains soft), e.g., singe → singeing
Nouns
Plurals formed by adding - s (or -es when they end in -s, -x, -z, -sh, or soft -ch) are
regarded as regular and are not shown, e.g., dog → dogs; lunch → lunches
Other plural forms are given in the dictionary, notably for:
• nouns ending in - i or -o, e.g., agouti → agoutis; albino → albinos
• nouns ending in - a, -um, or -us that are or appear to be Latinate forms, e.g.,
alumna → alumnae; spectrum → spectra; alveolus → alveoli
• nouns ending in - y, e.g., fly → flies; party → parties
• nouns with more than one plural form, e.g., crux → cruxes or cruces; money
→ moneys or monies
• nouns with plurals showing a change in the stem, e.g., foot → feet; louse →
lice
• nouns with plurals unchanged from the singular form, e.g., sheep → sheep;
bonsai → bonsai
Adjectives
The following forms for comparative and superlative are regarded as regular and
are not shown in the dictionary:
• words of one syllable adding - er and -est, e.g., great → greater, greatest
• words of one syllable ending in silent e, which drop the -e and add -er and -est,
e.g., brave → braver, bravest
• words that form the comparative and superlative by adding “more” and “most”;
e.g., beautiful → more beautiful, most beautiful
Other forms are given in the dictionary, notably for:
• adjectives that form the comparative and superlative by doubling a final
consonant, e.g., hot → hotter, hottest
• two-syllable adjectives that form the comparative and superlative with - er and -
est (typically adjectives ending in -y and their negative forms), e.g., happy →
happier, happiest; unhappy → unhappier, unhappiest
Syllabification
In the New Oxford American Dictionary, syllable breaks are shown for main entries
and derivatives. Although all possible breaks are shown, there are some conven-
tions that govern how writers break words at the ends of lines. Guidelines include:
• Avoid a break that will leave one letter and a hyphen at the end of the line or one
letter (or one letter and a punctuation mark such as a period) at the beginning of
a line.
• Avoid breaking a word that is already hyphenated except at that hyphen (e.g.,
self-affirmation; leather-bound).
• Never break proper names.
• Avoid breaking abbreviations.
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