Browse through the new Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary and you may come across the words aquire, discribe or one of 698 other misspelled words. Those aren’t typos. The Encarta distinguishes itself from other dictionaries by introducing commonly misspelled words within its A to Z listing. The reasoning behind that is simple, says editor Anne H. Soukhanov, who oversaw the entire operation from her Bedford home office. If someone doesn’t know how to spell the word they’re looking up — such as acquire — they may never find it if they’re looking under the aqu- entries. In the Encarta College Dictionary, misspelled words appear in a lighter typeface, are crossed through and have a reference to the correct spelling.

It took several hundreds of people a year and a half to compile the dictionary, which was released in July. With language evolving sometimes overnight thanks to constantly changing technology, Soukhanov and Encarta realized the need for a new college dictionary to reflect the times. "We really needed to represent in the dictionary the way the language is represented in the 21st century," she says. The company did a study involving 41 university professors throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia and made a depressing discovery: Today’s students are heading off to college less prepared grammatically than students in the 1950s.

Part of that can be blamed on word processing software with automatic spelling and grammar checks that many rely on excessively. Also, today’s students hear words more than they see them in print, leading to confusing expressions such as "by-in-large" and "doggie-dog," instead of by-and-large and dog-eat-dog.

The dictionary also distinguishes itself by adding new words such as resistin and nandrolone and Soukhanov’s personal favorite, dotgov. (From the e-mail extension .gov, which all government employees use, the term now means a government staffer.) With more people worldwide speaking or learning English, Soukhanov warns that the competition for college graduates is expanding into a global competition. People with higher education skills, including proper grammar, will have a huge advantage.

"The fact that I can sit in Bedford and work for a company in London that’s managing this product … tells us all about the global reach of business."