Editing Oxford English Dictionary (section)

== Historical nature ==
As a historical dictionary, the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' features entries in which the earliest ascertainable recorded sense of a word, whether current or obsolete, is presented first, and each additional sense is presented in historical order according to the date of its earliest ascertainable recorded use.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/the-oxford-english-dictionary |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111219193859/http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/the-oxford-english-dictionary |archive-date=19 December 2011 |title=The Oxford English Dictionary |access-date=26 May 2015 |website=Oxford Dictionaries |url-status=dead}}</ref> Following each definition are several brief illustrating quotations presented in chronological order from the earliest ascertainable use of the word in that sense to the last ascertainable use for an obsolete sense, to indicate both its life span and the time since its desuetude, or to a relatively recent use for current ones.

The format of the ''OED''{{'}}s entries has influenced numerous other historical [[lexicography]] projects. The forerunners to the ''OED'', such as the early volumes of the ''[[Deutsches Wörterbuch]]'', had initially provided few quotations from a limited number of sources, whereas the ''OED'' editors preferred larger groups of quite short quotations from a wide selection of authors and publications. This influenced later volumes of this and other lexicographical works.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Lexicography and the OED: Pioneers in the Untrodden Forest |last=Osselton |first=Noel |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-19-158346-9 |location=Oxford |chapter=Murray and his European Counterparts |editor-last=Mugglestone |editor-first=Lynda}}</ref>