Penny Silva – Editor

As Deputy Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary I managed six teams of Editors revising the Dictionary, as well as revising the text myself. As Director, I was responsible for seventy editors and freelance assistants and a large budget, and I initiated the commissioning of a new suite of editorial software modules. I continued to work part-time post-retirement, updating the OED text, until 2020.

I have contributed chapters to various collections of academic papers: 'Lexicography and the OED', ed. Lynda Mugglestone (1992, OUP, Oxford); 'Focus on South Africa', ed. Vivian de Klerk (1996, John Benjamins, Amsterdam); 'Englishes around the World' vol. 2, ed. Edgar W. Schneider (1997, John Benjamins, Amsterdam); 'The Major Varieties of English: Papers from MAVEN 97', eds. Hans Lindquist et al. (1998, Almqvist & Wiksell, Växjö); and 'Who's Centric Now?' ed. Bruce Moore (2001, OUP, Melbourne).

I managed a team of four other editors, revising the lexicographic material collected over several decades; I designed the schedule towards completion, negotiated the contract with the Oxford University Press in Oxford for the 'Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles' (1996, OUP, Oxford); drafted thousands of senses, and proofread the entire text. We completed the revision in 1995, on target, and FTP'd it to the Press, the first large text to be delivered in this way.

I edited 'The Albany Journals of Thomas Shone' (1992, Rhodes University, Grahamstown) for the Graham's Town Series, a series publishing South African manuscripts, with historical context and notes.