Lexicography. Types of dictionaries

from the speech habits of a given speech community and commented on by the author in such a way that reader under­stands the meaning of each separate form and is informed of the relevant facts, concerning the function of that form in the community.

Lexicography is the theory and practice of compiling dictionari­es. 

diverse, that it is normal that there are various type of dictionaries. One of the most important principles of division among dictionaries is diachronic and synchronic.

Diachronic

Diachronic dictionaries are primarily concerned with the history and development of words in respect of their forms and meanings.
Among them we can find  etymological and historical dictionaries.

Synchronic

The purpose of synchronic dictionaries is to deal with the lexical stock of language of a certain stage of historical development.
The terms 'synchronic' and 'contemporary' are not equal, as 'contempora­ry' relates to the present day and 'synchronic' - to the present century.

Historical dictionaries focus their attention on the changes in the form and meaning of words within a period of time, for which there is his­torical evidence at hand. 

Etymological dictionaries focus their atten­tion on the origin of words. They deal with prehistory of words. The prehistory often requires the origin of the word in other languages.

based on the principle which is concerned with the national standard language.
There are two types of general dictionaries: standard-descriptive and overall-descriptive.

Restricted

Restricted  dictionaries are based on a variation of language:
a Dictionary of Dialects,
a Dictionary of Slang,
a Dictionary of Synonyms,
a Dictionary of Phraseological Units,
a Dictionary of Abbreviations,
a Dictionary on Science,
some author's dictionaries,
a Dictionary of Foreign Words, etc.

Standard-descriptive 
dictionaries can be characterized as descri­bing the standard national language used at the definite point of time. This dictionary points to the norms of using words. It does not describe dialectal forms, archaisms, origin of words

Overall-descriptive dictionaries include all the information about words. Such a dictionary will tend to register occasional appli­cations, author's words, technical words.

number of languages represented in it: bi-lingual and monolingual dictionary.
The main difficulty of bi-lingual dictionary is to coordinate the lexi­cal units of one language to that of another.

Dictionaries also differ in the number of units they list: big academic dictionaries, medial-sized, small dictionaries. in the order of units: alphabetical non-alphabetical (thematic).