The theory and practice of compiling dictionaries is called lexicography. General lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of general dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that provide a description of the language in general use. Such a dictionary is usually called a general dictionary. Specialized lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of specialized dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that are devoted to a (relatively restricted) set of linguistic and factual elements of one or more specialist subject fields, e.g. legal lexicography. Such a dictionary is usually called a specialized dictionary. Practical lexicographic work involves several activities, and the compilation of well crafted dictionaries require careful consideration of all or some of the following aspects: efining the communicative and cognitive functions of the dictionary, Selecting and organizing the components of the dictionary;Selecting words and affixes for systematization as entries;Selecting collocations, phrases and examples;Choosing lemma forms for each word or part of word to be lemmatized;Defining words;Organizing definitions;Specifying pronunciations of words;Selecting equivalents in bi- and polylingual dictionaries;Translating collocations, phrases and examples in bi- and polylingual dictionaries.One important goal of lexicography is to keep the lexicographic information costs incurred by dictionary users as low as possible.
