Craigie and Aitken
The fundamental principles of editorial policy were established under the authority of the first editor, Sir William Craigie, who was also the third editor of the ''Stevenson
Dr James A. C. Stevenson further refined the coverage of semantic and grammatical usage. He continued the trend towards further and more detailed analysis of the entries and sought especially to capture the intricacies of Older Scots syntax. He echoed Aitken with respect to the scope of the dictionary. Stevenson tackled a number of previously intransigent problems of the management of the dictionary materials, especially with regard to making previously used slips available for the later letters of the alphabet, a process known as sending on. Stevenson regularised this procedure and modernised and simplified some of the rules of layout of the published material.Dareau
Under the editorial direction of Margaret G. Dareau, Craigie and Aitken's approaches were developed further, and the project finally reached completion. Dareau believed that while Scots words must of necessity be compared with their English counterparts (where available), great care should be taken to ensure that due consideration was given to Scots as a separate language. Consequently, she placed greater emphasis on the functioning of the word in society. This period of editorship also saw a reduction in discrimination between the language of the 16th and 17th centuries. Entries were no longer omitted merely because they made their first appearance in Scots after 1600. Though the spelling may be anglicised, much of the usage of the 17th century is still characteristically Scots. Dareau also oversaw the final rejection of the concept of separating entries by phonemic variation, which had meant that readers needed to consult several entries to gain a full picture of the history of what was effectively the same word. Since 2004 the ability to search the DOST electronically within the Dictionary of the Scots Language has greatly helped to alleviate this difficulty when dealing with the earlier sections of the alphabet.Significance
Inevitably, the perceptions of different editors have reflected the changing views of Scotland's past and present, and attitudes to the Scots language developed considerably between the 1920s and 2002. The project also evolved into an enterprise supported and funded by six of Scotland's Universities and a good number of Charitable Foundations, and, latterly, by the Scottish Office and the Scottish Arts Council. From 2001 to 2004, a team at the University of Dundee, led by Dr Victor Skretkowicz and lexicographer, Susan Rennie, digitized the full text of all twelve volumes and made them freely available as part of the online '' Dictionary of the Scots Language''. The archives of their work are now held by the University's Archive Services.References
{{ReflistSee also
* Dictionary of the Scots Language * Scottish National Dictionary * Scottish Language Dictionaries 1931 non-fiction books 1931 establishments in Scotland Scottish non-fiction books Scots language University of Dundee Dictionaries