Two families of pronunciation systems
Most dictionaries fall into one of two camps. The first uses the actual International Phonetic Alphabet — Oxford, Cambridge, Longman, and Wiktionary all do this (as did Macmillan's online dictionary until it closed in June 2023), wrapping the transcription in forward slashes, like /fəˈtɒɡrəfi/. This piece's companion, Phonetics & the IPA, covers how to read those symbols directly.
The second camp — most notably Merriam-Webster, the dictionary most Americans actually reach for — uses its own homegrown respelling system instead of standard IPA, wrapped in reversed slashes: \fə-ˈtä-grə-fē. Rather than IPA's special symbols, Merriam-Webster spells the sound out using ordinary letters with diacritical marks layered on top — a macron (ā) for a "long" vowel sound as in "day," an umlaut-like mark (ä) for the broad "ah" sound in "father," and so on — precisely because it's designed to be more intuitive to an English-speaking reader who's never studied linguistics, at the cost of being useless for comparing across other languages the way true IPA is. Both systems are trying to solve the exact same problem from opposite directions: IPA optimizes for universal precision, Merriam-Webster's system optimizes for instant readability by someone who already knows English spelling conventions.
Finding the key
Every dictionary — print or online — publishes a pronunciation key that decodes its specific symbols, usually in the front matter of a print edition or linked from the site's help or "about" pages online. This single step is the one most people skip, and it's the one that actually matters: the symbols themselves are meaningless until you've checked which sound each one is meant to represent in that specific dictionary, since — as the M-W-versus-IPA example above shows — the same squiggle can mean different things in different systems. Merriam-Webster in particular publishes a full "Guide to Pronunciation" and a shorter "Quick Reference" specifically because its symbol set doesn't match IPA and can't be assumed.
The good news: nearly every online dictionary today also has an audio button — a small speaker icon next to the entry — that plays an actual human voice saying the word. Written key plus audio, used together, beats either one alone: the written key tells you precisely which sound is intended even when you can't hear a subtle distinction, and the audio confirms you're interpreting the symbols correctly.
American vs. British transcriptions aren't just accents — they're systematically different
Even within IPA-based dictionaries, American and British transcriptions of the same word can differ in real, patterned ways, not just idiosyncratically:
Rhoticity. American English pronounces the "r" in words like "car" and "hard"; British Received Pronunciation generally doesn't. So "car" transcribes as /kɑːr/ in an American-English dictionary and /kɑː/ in a British one — the same word, a genuinely different sound inventory, not a typo.
The trap-bath split. Words like "bath," "class," and "dance" take the /æ/ vowel (as in "cat") in American English, but the broader /ɑː/ vowel (as in "father") in British Received Pronunciation — /bæθ/ versus /bɑːθ/. This is one of the more noticeable systematic differences between the two accents, and dictionaries that offer both an American and British transcription (Cambridge and Oxford both do, for most entries) let you see it side by side.
Length marks. British/IPA-standard transcriptions use the length mark ː more consistently (as in /iː/ for "see"); American dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster's own system, often skip it, since the American transcription tradition treats length as redundant: the symbol itself (/i/ versus /ɪ/) already shows which vowel is meant, by its quality.
Two dictionaries disagreeing about a word's pronunciation usually isn't either one being "wrong" — it's very often the honest, documented difference between American and British English, made visible in a way plain spelling never shows you.
Stress marks: where in the word, and which direction
Modern IPA transcriptions place the stress mark ˈ directly before the stressed syllable — /fəˈtɒɡrəfi/ tells you the stress falls on "TOG." Many older print dictionaries, including older Webster's-tradition American dictionaries, instead placed an accent mark after the stressed syllable itself, a genuinely different convention that can catch readers off guard moving between an old paper dictionary and a modern app. When in doubt, check the specific key for that specific book or site rather than assuming the convention you learned elsewhere carries over.
Beyond the page: hearing real, natural speech
Two free tools go a step past the dictionary entry itself, useful once you've got the written transcription down and want to hear the word used naturally. YouGlish works like a search engine for pronunciation: type in a word or phrase, and it surfaces real video clips of people saying it in context — genuinely useful for names, slang, brand names, and technical terms that a general dictionary won't cover at all. Forvo is crowdsourced audio specifically: native speakers from around the world record themselves saying individual words, and you can filter results by accent or dialect, which is the fastest way to hear how the exact same word actually sounds across, say, Scottish, Australian, and American English side by side.
Try this
Pick three words you're genuinely unsure how to say, look each one up in a real dictionary, read the written pronunciation key and press the audio button, then say the word out loud until both match — that combination catches mistakes that either method alone would miss.
The takeaway
Dictionaries split into two real, internally consistent systems for writing down pronunciation — standard IPA (Oxford, Cambridge, Wiktionary) and Merriam-Webster's own homegrown respelling system — and the two can look nothing alike for the exact same word, which is confusing only until you know to check which system you're reading. Always find the specific pronunciation key for the dictionary you're using rather than assuming symbols carry over, and pair the written key with the audio button most online dictionaries now offer. American and British transcriptions of the same word often differ systematically, not randomly (rhoticity, the trap-bath split, length marks), and tools like YouGlish and Forvo let you hear real, natural pronunciation once you've got the written form sorted out.
Try this: pick three words you're unsure how to pronounce, check both the written key and the audio button for each, and say them aloud until they match.
Sources & Further Reading
Sources
- The distinction between IPA-based dictionary systems (Oxford, Cambridge, Longman, Wiktionary; Macmillan until its online dictionary closed on 30 June 2023) and Merriam-Webster's own respelling notation reflects each publisher's own documented pronunciation-key material.
- Rhoticity and the trap-bath split as systematic American/British pronunciation differences reflect standard phonetics and dialectology reference material.
- YouGlish's and Forvo's functionality reflects each service's own current, published description of what it does.
Go deeper
- 🌐 Merriam-Webster: How to Read Pronunciation Symbols — the dictionary's own guide to its respelling system
- 🌐 YouGlish.com — real video clips of any word or phrase spoken in context
- 🌐 Forvo.com — crowdsourced native-speaker audio, filterable by accent
- 🌐 Related piece in this library: Phonetics & the IPA, this category, for how to read the IPA symbols these dictionaries are built on