Martin Manser is a professional reference-book editor who has worked on more than one hundred reference books including: The Penguin Wordmaster Dictionary, The Bloomsbury Good Word Guide, Chambers' Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms, The Macmillan Student's Dictionary and The New Penguin Thesaurus.

Stephen Curtis was an English lecturer for ten years and since 1988 has worked as a freelance lexicographer, translator and writer. He has recently contributed to: The Encarta World English Dictionary, The New Penguin English Dictionary. He is author of Increase Your Word Power and (also with Martin Manser) The Wordsworth Crossword Companion.