James Gleick Quotes

As sheer casual reading matter, I still find the English dictionary the most interesting book in our language.

In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.

In the digital future, texts will be annotated visually, animated and illustrated like never before. The austere 'prayer book' paper that permitted the space for Shepard's illustrations to Pepys' diaries is now being recreated in the digital era.

Dictionaries are always fun, but not always reassuring.

I'm very sensitive to the English language. I studied the dictionary obsessively when I was a kid and collect old dictionaries. Words, I think, are very powerful and they convey an intention.

We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy.

As things go digital, the notion of new editions will go away. A publisher can add video and assessment content at scale, make the change in 30 seconds and it's just a software update.

Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well.

I believe we should celebrate new possibilities of combining the printed codex with electronic technology... The information ecology is getting richer, not thinner.

Technology has changed the way book publishing works, as it has changed everything else in the world of media.

Bookstores will not disappear but will exploit digital technologies to increase their virtual and physical inventories, and perhaps become publishers themselves.

When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.

There certainly was a lot of potential in the air for doing a magazine which focused on the way business, in particular, was being transformed by the Internet.

I won't even try to predict the specifics, but I think the ebook - as a medium - could be a game-changer.

As president of the American Historical Association, I started a programme to make dissertations into e-books in 1999. Before I knew it, I was involved in other electronic projects. Harvard invited me to become director of the libraries in 2007.

To rush to throw away your magazine business and move it on the iPad is just sheer insanity and insecurity and fear.

Since fantasy isn't about technology, the accelleration has no impact at all. But it's changed the lives of fantasy writers and editors. I get to live in England and work for a New York publisher!

Every time I have to look up a word in the dictionary, I'm delighted.

Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.

I use the dictionary all the time when I'm reading or working on scripts.

I don't think there's a... boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.

I'm a massive fan of the dictionary.

I once tried to read the dictionary. It didn't work.

I've been collecting linguistic oddities for years and years, ever since I was small. I've got loads of notebooks where I've jotted down things I couldn't make sense of.

English is full of Scandinavian words. Margate, Ramsgate, Billingsgate, any town with a 'gate' on it takes their suffix from the Danish word 'gade' which simply means 'street.'