introduction
This chapter is about words—their relationships, their constituent parts,
and their internal organization. We believe that this information will be of
value to anyone interested in words, for whatever reason; to anyone interested
in dictionaries and how they represent the aspects of words we deal
with here; to anyone involved in developing the vocabularies of native and
non-native speakers of English; to anyone teaching writing across the curriculum
who must teach the characteristics of words specific to their discipline;
to anyone teaching writing who must deal with the usage issues created by
the fact that different communities of English speakers use different word
forms, only one of which may be regarded as standard.