About our blog

The Macmillan Dictionary Blog is a multi-authored blog discussing the English language today. We explore a wide range of topics related to English as it is used around the world, and hope to be of interest and relevance to the international community of English speakers. The blog welcomes contributions from guest authors and comments from readers. Please familiarise yourself with our Comment and Moderation Policy.

About our authors

Stephen Bullon

After keeping busy at school doing sport in preference to anything academic, I became a window cleaner in the French city of Nantes, where I spent a gap year. Returning to France after taking a degree in Russian, I taught English to employees of a major oil company and reached the semi-final of the French darts championship.

Back in the UK, I stumbled across an ad for trainee lexicographers on the COBUILD project at the University of Birmingham, which led to a 14-year stint writing dictionary entries and playing cricket for the English department. I then spent eight years at Longman Dictionaries, and finally joined Macmillan as Dictionary Publisher towards the end of 2007.

Away from the office, I spend as much time as possible in Sussex, walking in the country, growing vegetables, and enjoying the changing seasons.

Jonathan Cole

After studying Classical Civilisation and European Literature in South Africa, I came to the UK to study archaeology at Oxford University. I then became director of Oxford University’s Centre for Maritime Archaeology. After a few years of excavating sunken, ancient cities (Alexandria and Heracleion) in Egypt, I came to question the daily drudge of diving and sunburn, and yearned for a computer screen and fluorescent light.

So, I am currently a stay-at-home dad, looking after my relatively new twins. In between nursery and building blocks I am co-authoring a volume on the sunken city of Alexandria and working as a freelance SEO consultant. I love history and literature and expect I will be the mispelling, bad grammor plebianne in this iminent lineup of heavywait lexicografers.

Shane Rae

I studied Anthropology at the University of Victoria, Canada, where my focus was on First Nations Culture and Language. I have been a literacy and technology specialist in Canada and the USA, and carried out some extensive work translating Inuktitut to English for a cultural project. I also worked on an international team of educators that created environmental education programs for schools worldwide.

I moved to the UK in 1998 and after teaching in Devon, I relocated to Oxfordshire where I taught first Primary School and then Secondary School, eventually ending up as a Director of IT and Project Manager. I studied Advanced Computing at Oxford University, graduating in 2005. Currently I work in the Dictionaries Department at Macmillan Education. I am a competitive drag racer and am also an avid surfer, snowboarder and skateboarder.

Michael Rundell

I have been a lexicographer since 1980, after a not very brilliant career as an academic then English language teacher. I got into the dictionary business by accident, but I have been lucky enough to be involved in all the major developments over the last 25 years or so – and, as Macmillan Dictionary Online shows, this field is still developing in new directions. I worked for a time at COBUILD during the earliest days of corpus lexicography, then for over ten years at Longman. These days I divide my time between being chief editor of the Macmillan dictionaries and a director of Lexicography MasterClass, a company that runs dictionary projects and training courses in lexicography and lexical computing. I am the co-author (with Sue Atkins) of the Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography (2008).

Apart from writing dictionaries, I train regularly in T’ai Chi, am learning Spanish when I get the time, and am active in local politics (as a member of an environmental group promoting sustainable development in Canterbury, where I live). I also like movies, walking, and watching cricket, and I’m the author of The Wisden Dictionary of Cricket (2007).

Kati Sule

I studied English Language and Literature at the University of Szeged in Hungary and also trained, and later worked, as an English language teacher. In 1998 my husband and I moved to the UK and when the opportunity presented itself I decided to start a career in publishing. These days I work as Commissioning Editor in the Dictionaries Department at Macmillan Education, where I am involved in both print and digital projects.

A few years ago I relocated to windy (and often rainy) Amsterdam but I haven’t severed ties with Oxford and visit regularly. I am interested in anything to do with language and language learning, but I would say my favourite ‘topics’ at the moment are bi- and multilingualism, language acquisition, and the influence of English on other languages. I spend what little free time I have admiring my two-year-old daughter’s seemingly effortless ability to cope with three languages and cultures (Dutch, English and Hungarian), and when I am not doing that I fantasise about running another marathon.

Guest authors

Jeremy Bale

Jeremy has an MA in Arabic from Cambridge University and is a graduate of the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, Lebanon. Jeremy has lived in Qatar, Arabian Gulf, working in the oil industry and has worked as an Arabic translator and interpreter for the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

Stan Carey

Stan Carey is a freelance writer and editor living in the west of Ireland. He writes about the English language on his blog Sentence first.

Lindsay Clandfield

Lindsay Clandfield is an English teacher and author of books for language learners and teachers. He has a blog called Six Things, in which he collects lists relating to the English language and English language teaching. He lives in Spain.

Sharon Creese

I have a strong editorial background having worked as a journalist, technical writer and editor in fields ranging from the automotive and engineering industries, to finance, healthcare and education. As part of my Latin American Studies degree, I lived for a year in Colombia, working with a local children’s charity. I recently completed an Applied Linguistics Masters degree at the University of Newcastle, focusing on bilingualism among Spanish/indigenous-language speakers in Latin America.

Brett Jocelyn Epstein

B.J. Epstein has a PhD in translation studies from Swansea University in Wales and she translates from the Scandinavian languages to English. She can be reached via her translation blog or her website.

Gwyneth Fox

Gwyneth Fox started her career as an EFL teacher in Rome. She returned to UK, where she lectured in Applied Linguistics at Birmingham Polytechnic, and ran teacher-training courses. She then returned to the classroom, and taught ESL at all levels in Birmingham schools, whilst continuing to train teachers. She was recruited to the COBUILD project at the University of Birmingham as a part-time researcher when it began in 1981. She continued to work with the project, taking over as Publishing Director in 1993, being responsible for all the dictionaries, grammars, and other EFL materials that were produced. During that time and since then she has travelled extensively, and has run courses, given seminars, and attended conferences around the world. She left COBUILD in 1997, but stayed at the University and lectured in linguistics and applied linguistics. From 1999 she worked as a consultant for Macmillan Education, with the title of Publisher, Dictionaries. She was the Associate Editor for the dictionaries, being involved with the planning of the projects and focusing on the quality of text. In January 2008 she withdrew from day-to-day involvement with the dictionaries, and is now a consultant to the dictionaries publishing team. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Aston in Birmingham.

Nick Gillard

Nick Gillard is Publisher for Macmillan Carribean. He is also Scottish.

Janet Gough

After studying French at Wadham College, Oxford, I started out in lexicography in 1990, working on the first edition of the Oxford Hachette French Dictionary. A couple of years later I went to Manchester to do an MSc in Machine Translation, then moved here to Glasgow where I was a lexicographer at Collins Dictionaries until 2006, working mainly on the Collins Robert titles, but also on the Cobuild series, and some more experimental projects such as Benedict.

I currently stay in Kirkintilloch, a place-name that for some reason many Sassenachs have difficulty pronouncing! and work as a freelance lexicographer/editor.

Paul Harrington

I’m a blogger and podcaster based in Gilwern, South Wales. Formerly, for almost 20 years, I was a primary school teacher in the Welsh valleys. I left UK education two years ago and swapped the classroom for  the International Baccalaureate at its Cardiff office to become the manager of their online professional development offerings to teachers, which has allowed me to continue with my passion for helping and encouraging teachers to embrace the use of technology in education.

I have  a wife and three grown up daughters and two gorgeous grandchildren.

Susan Jellis

I’m a freelance editor, lexicographer and writer, and have worked on a range of learner, native speaker and specialist subject dictionaries for various publishers. Although my degrees are in languages and linguistics, I worked in biosciences publishing for many years in the early part of my career and now often advise on science for dictionaries, as well as writing specialist glossaries.

Working freelance in recent years has given me the chance to take on projects of different kinds, as well as time to complete a diploma in garden history at Birkbeck College, which has led to a different range of writing opportunities. When I’m not at my computer or reading, I’m in a garden, either mine or someone else’s, or I’m indulging my interests in theatre or ballet. That’s when I’m not travelling – apart from having far-flung family and friends, there’s always somewhere new I just have to see.

Jamie Keddie

Jamie Keddie is an English teacher, teacher trainer and writer. He is author of Images, published by Oxford University Press in the Resource Books for Teachers series. He runs TEFLclips.com, a website dedicated to the use of YouTube in teaching. He also writes a blog.

Finn Kirkland

Having grown up in the sun-kissed archipelago of the Orkney Islands, my heart has always been in the north. A post-school year out in Norway strengthened the Nordic bond, leading to a degree in Scandinavian Studies at Edinburgh University, where I graduated in 2000.

On the shocking realisation that this didn’t lead automatically into any particular profession, I spent 18 months in Valladolid, Spain, and a year in Sweden teaching English to a mixture of adults and kids, before joining Macmillan in 2004, initially working as a sales representative for Scandinavia, and, more recently, moving into the role of Business Development Manager.

My interests centre round language and sport, and I’m always keen to try my hand at something new: from learning Maori to playing underwater hockey.

Dr Dymphna Lonergan

Dr Dymphna Lonergan left Ireland for Australia in 1972 with her husband and baby son. She has lived in Adelaide ever. Her book Sounds Irish: The History of the Irish Language in Australia (Lythrum Press, Adelaide 2004) came out of a PhD research project. Dymphna lectures in English at Flinders University and her current research is into Irish place names in Australia. She is also a member of the Irish speaking community in Australia.

Sarah McKeown

I studied English Language and Literature at the University of Leeds then went on to do a Masters in Eighteenth-Century English Literature at the University of Manchester, specialising in the rise of the novel and the diaries of James Boswell.

I’ve since worked in various book-related roles: as a bookseller, bookshop events promoter and marketing co-ordinator for an independent publisher of non-fiction. After nearly three glorious years living in Italy, where I took my CELTA and discovered the joys of teaching English and learning Italian, I returned to the UK and did another MA – this time in publishing – at Oxford Brookes University. After that I was lucky enough to be accepted on the Macmillan Graduate Programme, where I worked on www.onestopclil.com, dabbled in publications for Italy and provided editorial assistance in the Dictionaries department. I’m currently working as a Managing Editor on Macmillan’s secondary ELT courses.

Interests include (not surprisingly) books, wine, the digital revolution, language and linguistics, running (badly) and trying to maintain my Italian.

Mairi MacDonald

After studying History and Russian I went on to teach English in Lithuania and Poland. On returning to the UK I got involved in lexicography at a time when  the major EFL dictionary publishers were starting to make CD-ROMs to accompany their print editions.

I now work freelance from my home in Perthshire. I’ve been involved in several digital projects with Macmillan in recent years, adapting print material for CD-ROM and Web, Flash programing as well as a spot of writing.

I spend much of my time chasing after my three small children so I always welcome the break that any freelance work brings!

Roisin Muldoon

I was born and brought up in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. After studying Irish at A level, I moved to England for university and have lived in the Midlands ever since. I taught English and Media Studies for three years and now work on National Curriculum Tests for QCDA (Qualification and Curriculum Development Agency), and am very interested in how we each adapt language to suit our lives and reflect our personalities. Despite almost a decade living in England, my Northern Irish accent is as strong as ever and I gain great satisfaction from teaching our colourful dialect to my English friends.

Beth Penfold

Having graduated with a B.Ed degree in Literature and Drama, I became a primary teacher in Manchester and later an outreach worker for an inner-city young people’s project, with a focus on improving literacy and communication skills. I moved to Oxford in 1995 with my husband and qualified as a human resources manager, specializing in recruitment and training.

I had the first of two little girls in 2003 and spent a couple of years being a full-time mum. When the boredom became too much and the charm of smelling of sick wore off I started work at Macmillan as P. A. to our director, and am now training in the dark arts of all things editorial.

My hobbies are reading, exercising, cars and chasing small children around ball pools.

Elizabeth Potter

Like most people who write dictionaries for a living, I became a lexicographer by accident. After several years working as an ELT teacher, course organiser, and as a translator and teacher of Italian, I was looking for a change. A friend spotted a job ad for bilingual lexicographers at Longman. I applied and got the job, and discovered something I had never suspected – that dictionaries are written by people like me. After two years at Longman I moved to COBUILD, where I worked on monolingual learner’s dictionaries. Since going freelance in 1999, I have contributed to a variety of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, including the Macmillan range of dictionaries, while continuing to do some translating. For several years I wrote a weekly web article about English and I now answer readers’ queries and write book reviews for MED Magazine.

Vikki Reilly

I work in the sales and marketing team for leading independent publisher, Birlinn Ltd, in Edinburgh. Before this, I studied literature and worked as a bookseller. I find getting paid for enthusing about books a rather lovely (and jammy) way to spend my days.

Drew Stanley

I studied Classics at Oxford University and now I’m working on BuzzWord with the Macmillan Dictionaries team, so I like words old and new. I’m trying to crack the world of publishing so that I can leave my mark on the history of words long after I can only be looked up in the Annals of the Early Internet (Volume I, 21st Century), and possibly take over the world. I’d be happy with either.