Building your dictionary

[Lisa T]

I have just started the task of building my dictionary. I had no idea that it would take this long?! What is the typical time spent in building this? What has been your experience regarding this, and what is a reasonable amount of time it will take? I know it is a process, and it is something you do through out your career, but I'd love to hear from anyone regarding this.

[Lisa T]

Many thanks to both of you for your replies! Yes, I guess it's sort of naive to think that once I hooked up my software I'd be good to go! As with all things, it is a process! THANKS!!

[S. Arielle]

go to www.dictionaryjumpstart.com

[Elsy M. Altuve]

When I started in school in 1997 I started with a generic dictionary of 30,000. Up until 2008 I had accumulated a dictionary of over 180,000. Then my computer crashed and I hadn't saved my dictionary. Now in 2009 I have had to start again with a generic dictionary of 30,000. The point is, I am always adding to my dictionary, but now I am also backing up my dictionary once a week. I don't want to cry over spilled milk anymore, so at the moment I'm not quite sure where my dictionary is at but I'll recheck it in about a year or so.

[Katy Cuellar]

My dictionary is so large (and I won't even say how large), that I recently lost 12,000 entries and it didn't make a bit of difference.

[Alexis McCutchen]

I started out with StenEd dictionary which the school gave us after we completed Theory. I've gone back and forth from around 85,000 to 90,0000 to 75,000 because I keep adding/deleting as my writing style changes. I'm in qualifiers now and I have a mixture of StenEd, Brief Encounters, and Mark K's briefs and phrases. And, yes, it is sooo time consuming.

And remember, ALWAYS backup. You never know if or when your laptop might crash and all that work down the drain. I backup about twice a month on an external hard drive. If you're building your dictionary every day, I'd backup more often.