Variant spellings
The main form of each word given in the New Oxford American Dictionary is always the standard American spelling. If there is a standard variant, e.g., a standard British spelling variant, this is indicated at the top of the entry and is cross-referred if its alphabetical position is more than five entries distant from the main entry. For examples, compare esophagus/oesophagus and phyllo/filo.
Other variants, such as archaic, old-fashioned, or informal spellings, are cross- referred to the main entry, but are not themselves listed at the parent entry. For example, compare cyder/cider.
Hyphenation
Although standard spelling in English is fixed, the use of hyphenation is not. In standard American English, a few general rules are followed, and these are outlined below.
Hyphenation of noun compounds: There is no hard-and-fast rule to determine whether, for example, airstream, air stream, or air-streamis correct. All forms are found in use: all are recorded in the Oxford databank and other standard texts. However, there is a broad tendency to avoid hyphenation for noun compounds in modern English (except when used to show grammatical function: see below). Thus there is, for example, a preference for airstream rather than air-stream, and for air raid rather than air-raid. Although this is a tendency in both American and British English, there is an additional preference in American English for the form to be one word and in British English for the form to be two words, e.g., airfare tends to be the most common form in American English, while air fare tends to be the most common form in British English. To save space and avoid confusion, only one of the three potential forms of each noun compound (the standard American one) is generally used as the headword form in the New Oxford American Dictionary. This does not, however, imply that other forms are incorrect or not used.
Grammatical function: Hyphens are also used to perform certain grammatical functions. When a noun compound made up of two separate words (e.g., credit card) is placed before another noun and used to modify it, the general rule is that the noun compound becomes hyphenated, e.g., I have overused my credit card and am now in credit-card debt. This sort of regular alternation is seen in example
sentences in the New Oxford American Dictionary but is not otherwise explicitly mentioned in the dictionary entries.
A similar alternation is found in compound adjectives such as well intentioned. When used predicatively (i.e., after the verb), such adjectives are unhyphenated, but when used attributively (i.e., before the noun), they are hyphenated: his remarks were well intentioned; a well-intentioned remark.
A general rule governing verb compounds means that, where a noun compound is two words (e.g., beta test), any verb derived from it is normally hyphenated (to beta-test:the system was beta-tested). Similarly, verbal nouns and adjectives are more often hyphenated than ordinary noun or adjective compounds (e.g., epoch- making).
Inflection
Compared with other languages, English has comparatively few inflections, and those that exist are remarkably regular. We add an -sto most nouns to make a plural; we add -edto most verbs to make a past tense or a past participle, and -ingto make a present participle.
Occasionally, a difficulty arises: for example, a single consonant after a short stressed vowel is doubled before adding -edor -ing(hum, hums, humming, hummed). In addition, words borrowed from other languages generally bring their foreign inflections with them, causing problems for English speakers who are not proficient in those languages.
In all such cases, guidance is given in the New Oxford American Dictionary. The main areas covered are outlined below.
Verbs
The following forms are regarded as regular and are therefore not shown in the dictionary:
•third person singular present forms adding -sto the stem (or -esto stems ending in -s, -x, -z, -sh, or soft -ch), e.g., find → finds; crush → crushes
•past tenses and past participles dropping a final silent e and adding -edto the stem, e.g., change → changed; dance → danced
