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Urdang loved words and language, and in graduate school studied Russian, German, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Polish. He taught linguistics for several years, but decided to change careers: he became an editor of dictionaries. After cutting his teeth at Funk and Wagnalls, he moved to Random House where he was in charge of a new project: the gigantic (9.25-pound, 2,091-page) unabridged Random House Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1966. It was the first major dictionary to be organized on a computer. But Urdang didn't rest on that laurel; he founded his own publishing company in 1969, and 1974 he started a newsletter on language, Verbatim, which I discovered shortly after high school. It helped me realize that I too loved the power of language, which led me to drop my career in Emergency Medical Services and return to college at 21 -- Journalism school, so I could learn to research and write quickly. I turned those skills toward my own newsletter, This is True. Urdang's company published more than 150 dictionaries and language reference books. He died August 21 from congestive heart failure at 81.
From This is True for 24 August 2008
Suggestions for further reading:
The Bantam Medical Dictionary, Sixth Edition
by Laurence Urdang
Amazon Price: $7.50
New York Times Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, & Mispronounced Words
Amazon Price: $9.95
Customer Review: Highly recommended to everyone who might be interested in history of words and use of words.
The Synonym Finder
by J. I. Rodale, Laurence Urdang, Nancy LaRoche
Amazon Price:
Customer Review: I've been looking for a good thesaurus for years and have three or four that I use. Someone recommended The Synonym Finder and I've had it for a few weeks and I use it constantly, It's so much better than all my others. I love it and wish I'd found i...
The Bantam Medical Dictionary
by Laurence Urdang
Amazon Price:
Customer Review: I purchased this for my kindle to make it easy to carry around for my massage training & found I was not able to do a search to get to specific words. The only way I was able to navigate was to page through. Very disappointing & time consuming. I ...
The American Century Dictionary
by Laurence Urdang
Amazon Price: $4.99
Customer Review: The price of this book, only $3.99, is the biggest selling point; you simply can't be that price. Size would have to be the second factor that makes this dictionary a best-buy. It is small enough to be carried in any purse or book bag.
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