Major accent and dialect distinctions in the British Isles section are represented covering Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern England, and Southern England. Others cover the distinctive accents and dialects of somewhat less extensive areas: Orkney and Shetland, the Channel Islands, the eastern England region of East Anglia, and the very major conurbation and administrative area of the English West Midlands. Northern and Southern Irish are distinguished, as is the speech of southwest and southeast England, where major differences apply. It is expected that the reader might concentrate on smaller sections to gain in-depth knowledge of a particular variety or group of closely-related varieties or, especially by referring to the sound charts, to obtain an overview of wider overall variation or of variation relating to specific linguistic variables.

Whilst Received Pronunciation (RP) is specifically presented as a supra-regional accent model frequently used in the teaching of English worldwide and for purposes of wide communication, its description plays only a very minor part in the analysis of the regional varieties, each of which is described in its own terms rather than in any sense as divergent from an externally-imposed norm. For reasons spelt out in the General Introduction, Standard English grammar is not explicitly discussed as a separate entity.