Thesarus Recommendation

bond · **Thesarus Recommendation -** 07-30-2006, 11:46 AM

Hey for those of you who "sneak away secretly with a thesarus on hand while writing copy"... would u mind recommending me a good thesarus? Mine is really old ... I thought of upgrading it =)

Andy Catsimanes · 03:59 PM

There're a lot of good tools online, but if you want to have something to hold in your hands I highly recommend "The Synonym Finder"

Amazon.com: The Synonym Finder: Books: J. I. Rodale,J. I. Rodale,Nancy LaRoche

From a review on Amazon:

Quote:

There are 1.5 million words in "The Synonym Finder", including variations on the same root word. That's more than 4 times the number of words in "Roget's International Thesaurus". If you simply want to find synonyms, this is the book for you. It isn't as versatile as a thesaurus that is organized by subject, but it's more to the point and easier to use if you are simply looking for word alternatives. Roget's is a better research tool, but this is a better and far more efficient synonym finder, and I think that students will prefer it to Roget's.

A.

Montello Marketing · 07-30-2006, 03:51 PM

Online, I just use dictionary.com. But for an actual handheld dead tree version, IMO you can't go wrong with a recent version of Roget's.

Michel Fortin · 07-30-2006, 04:15 PM

Answers.com - Online Dictionary, Encyclopedia and much more for me. You can right-click any word in any software and up pops a window with dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, reference, etc, etc, etc. I use it all the time when I write copy.

Montello Marketing · 07-30-2006, 05:07 PM

Michel,

I just downloaded it. Thanks for the recommendation. One question... and sorry I know you're not tech support for this...

When I get it to open while I'm on a word, it doesn't look up the entire word... just the letter I happen to be on at the time. I've tried highlighting the word then activating it, but still I only get a letter or two. Am I doing something wrong?

Michel Fortin · 07-30-2006, 05:14 PM

Never did that for me. I just hover my mouse over the word,and then alt-right click, it looks for the word. Other than that, I don't know.

Montello Marketing · 07-30-2006, 05:20 PM

Thanks. I'll have to figure this out. When I do what you say, in MS Word for instance on the word "nice" the popup might lookup "ni" or just "n" then give me alternative in the form of "did you mean..." I do find that on some words however it works correctly. Strange.

JanetB · 07-30-2006, 05:30 PM

Wow, I love this! Thanks, Michel for the recommendation, and thanks, Bond, for asking the question. I was content with thesaurus.com (aka dictionary.com) and I'm sure I'll still use them. But this is a nice tool! And I've come across answers.com but didn't realize until now what a cool site it is.

Michel Fortin · 07-30-2006, 05:31 PM

Try highlighting the word then alt-right-click.

Montello Marketing · 07-30-2006, 06:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michel Fortin

Try highlighting the word then alt-right-click.

Yeah, that's not always working either. Like I said, sometimes it does... sometimes it doesn't. Weird. Maybe it'll fix itself when I restart my system.

One other question: (Sorry Michel) is there any way to set it up so that synonyms come up first, instead of the defininition? For how I use it, I don't need to know the meaning of the word as much as alternates.

Just wondering.

PS - That all said... Word's built in thesaurus isn't too bad. Just a bit limited.