About "Italian A-B words". This is a plain-text file containing 31,600 Italian words. All the words start with A or B. The file could be used to make a supplementary spelling-dictionary for Excalibur, even though the collection covers only the beginning of the alphabet. The collection doesn't contain any accents. Many words that ought to bear accents have been removed altogether from the list, but the collection still contains unaccented versions of some words that ought to have an accent. A large proportion of the words are verb-parts. The collection of verb-parts was never complete and it is now more variable than before. This is because some words have been taken out of this collection for use in the "Italian Supplement" spelling-dictionary. Most of the regular future verb-parts that ought to end in accented letters were removed, and so were verb-parts containing "isc" and infinitives ending in -ire and -irsi. The original source of this collection is not known, but it looks as though someone started to produce a comprehensive collection of Italian words but was unable to complete it. The collection originally contained 52,000 words. It reached Excalibur early in 1997, and was merged with another large list of Italian words drawn from all parts of the alphabet. The two lists contained many duplicate entries which the merger eliminated, so the subsequent separation of the two lists left fewer words in this collection than it originally contained. The collection was further reduced by the deletion from this collection of words that are included in Paolo Matteucci's "Italian Dictionary" for Excalibur. Anyone who wants to reassemble something similar to the original collection will probably feel it desirable to add to this list the words starting with A and B in Paolo Matteucci's "Italian Dictionary" and in the "Italian Supplement". This would restore the words that have been removed, and would add some others as well. Adrienne Forbes email: dandaforbes@netmatters.co.uk September 1998