1. The macrostructure
1.1. the overall organization of the components of a dictionary including lexical entries and their microstructure
1.1.1. Front matter
1.1.1.1. provides a guide to the use of the dictionary and gives a full description of every part of the dictionary
1.1.2. Back matter
1.1.2.1. contains various linguistic aids
1.1.3. Middle matter
1.1.3.1. is usually devoted to grammatical information and sometimes consists of only illustrative graphs. Not many dictionaries have a middle matter.
1.1.4. Alphabetization
1.1.4.1. entries or words are arranged alphabetically, according to the 1st letter
1.1.5. Guide words
1.1.5.1. the guide words are two words in bold put at the top of any page
2. The microstructure
2.1. the structure of individual lexical entries, including types of lexical information and the way in which types of lexical information are organized
2.1.1. Entry
2.1.1.1. consists of a headword and all the information provided about this word
2.1.2. Sub-entry
2.1.2.1. is a word or a phrase derived from the main entry and included within the main entry
2.1.3. Headword
2.1.3.1. is the word that appears at the beginning of an entry, usually printed in boldface.
2.1.4. Orthographic information.
2.1.4.1. This relates to the written forms or spellings of words. Variant spellings
2.1.5. Morphological information
2.1.5.1. This kind of information includes three aspects in monolingual English dictionaries
2.1.5.1.1. Syllabification
2.1.5.1.2. Inflected forms
2.1.5.1.3. Derivative forms
2.1.6. Phonological information
2.1.6.1. This kind of information relates to two aspects: pronunciation and stress pattern
2.1.7. Syntactic information
2.1.7.1. indicates the part of speech of a word
2.1.8. Etymological information
2.1.8.1. shows the history or origin of a word.
2.1.9. Semantic information
2.1.9.1. Meaning
2.1.9.1.1. one or many senses or definitions are provided for any word
2.1.9.2. Synonyms and antonyms
2.1.9.2.1. Synonyms are the words which have similar meanings and antonyms are words which are opposite.
2.1.9.3. Collocations, idioms, and phrasal verbs
2.1.9.3.1. Some dictionaries indicate the words which collocate with the headword, or the idioms or phrasal verbs in which the headword appears.
2.1.10. Pragmatic information
2.1.10.1. relates to how words are used. This includes register information, style, and usage.
2.1.11. Helping aids
2.1.11.1. Examples
2.1.11.1.1. are provided to show how a word is used.
2.1.11.2. Illustrations and Graphics
2.1.11.2.1. Some dictionaries include illustrations to help clarify the meaning of certain words or to put them in context
2.1.11.3. Cross-reference
2.1.11.3.1. is used to avoid repeating information.