The design and layout are easy on the eyes, with a good mix of typefaces and weights of type. In both content and size it's larger than a concise dictionary - perhaps the nearest current equivalent is the New Oxford Dictionary of English , whose typographical conventions and style it resembles to some degree. Its definitions work hard to be in plain English, often with example sentences to illustrate usage. Those definitions I've sampled seem reasonable, often giving more context than its competitors. For most words pronunciations are supplied, but are signalled by a home-grown system that users will have to work at understanding.
Most entries have a headline definition in bold capitals, followed by a fuller one in normal type.
This works well when the definitions are of some length, but when they're short, as most are, it virtually repeats the headline, making the entry seem repetitive. This could have been a valuable innovation, but doesn't succeed much of the time. Like many other current dictionaries, it aspires to the character of an encyclopedia. It has lots of pictures illustrating terms, though whether many users will need visual references for a hatstand, a medal or a sheep is open to doubt. There are numerous maps, photographs, drawings of wildlife and structural diagrams of chemical compounds, the last of these a surprisingly technical addition to a general reference work.