The Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue is a natural complement to those of Middle and Early Modern English. It would have been unpractical to combine it with these, for several reasons. The period covered by it (mainly from 1375 to 1700) does not present any break comparable to that which distinguishes the earlier from the later period in English, and a division of the continuous Scottish material between two dictionaries would have been both inconvenient and unhistorical. The steadily increasing divergence between the two forms of the language would also lead to difficulties even in the Middle English dictionary, and would result in great confusion, and the inclusion of much irrelevant matter, in that of the Early Modern period. It would be impossible in the latter work to deal adequately with the Scottish variants of common words (e.g., ake, ald, atis, for oak, old, oats), or to give sufficient space to purely Scottish words and senses. The material for these could only be brought together by special collecting, and has in fact involved the close reading of printed books and manuscripts amounting to over 500 titles, a number of which extend to many volumes. A further very important consideration is the fact that for the successful handling of much of this material the editor must have a first-hand knowledge of the living Scottish tongue.