The second-hand dictionary

Source A: an original contemporary non-fiction-style account.

I bought the dictionary for its size. It was small enough to fit beside my chair, and the cover had the soft, rubbed shine of something frequently handled. At home, I found pencil marks in the margins. A previous owner had underlined ordinary words as carefully as unusual ones. Beside 'patient' stood a small star; beside 'departure', a date without explanation.

The marks made the book strangely crowded. Definitions occupied the centre of each page with their usual confidence, while another life had gathered at the edges. I could not know whether the notes belonged to a student, a traveller or somebody trying to improve a crossword score. That uncertainty mattered. It would have been easy to turn a few strokes of pencil into a story more complete than the evidence allowed.

I kept the marks. They did not prevent the dictionary from answering my questions, and sometimes they supplied a different question beside the answer. Why that word? Why that date? A reference book is meant to reduce uncertainty. This one did that job while quietly preserving a little uncertainty of its own.

Refer to the whole of Source A. Analyse how the writer uses language to present the significance of the previous owner’s markings. Explain the effects of specific words, phrases and language choices, using evidence from the passage.