Latest Word in Finding Right Words
If all of the leading word processing programs already come with a dictionary and a thesaurus, why would anyone want to spend $90 to buy another dictionary and thesaurus as a supplement?
For the American Heritage Electronic Dictionary from Houghton Mifflin Co., (800) 633-4514, the reason is simple. Its dictionary, available for both IBM-compatible and Macintosh computers, does a lot more than the one that came with your word processor.
If you want to spend a little more, $129, the Complete Writer’s Toolkit for IBM-compatible PCs only from Systems Compatibility Corp. of Chicago, (312) 329-0700, has the same dictionary and thesaurus and more. Added are the Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations with 6,000 quotations and three other Houghton Mifflin programs: the Abbreviation Expander to create or decode abbreviations, CorrecText grammar correction system and Written Word III to teach the principles of grammar and writing style.
The dictionaries built into many word processing programs are great for performing spelling checks. But if you’re not sure which words to write in the first place, you’ll have to leave the keyboard and look them up in a printed dictionary.
If you have the American Heritage Electronic Dictionary, however, a couple of keystrokes brings a menu to the screen that lets you look up definitions, synonyms and anagrams.
There are several ways to look up a word. The most basic is to merely type the word and up will come its pronunciation, definition and etymology.
If you’re not quite sure how to spell it, there is another way in which you enter the parts you remember and use “wild card” characters, ? or *, to stand for the ones you don’t. “E*mology” is the way to find both etymology and entomology and discover which one is about words and which one is about insects.
The program is forgiving of misspellings. It will guess what you might mean when you misspell a word to look up and present you with a list from which to choose. Of course, if you just type in entomology when you should have asked for etymology, you may be amazed at the definition you see.
Anagrams are fun. How many different words can you make by rearranging the letters in a word? The American Heritage Electronic Dictionary said timer will also yield merit, miter, mitre and remit. If I could sneak a hidden laptop with this program into my next game of Scrabble, maybe I could win.
Perhaps the most impressive function is called search, which lets you find words based on their definitions. For instance, if you need a simile for the word blue , you’ll find everything from ageratum, a tropical plant with violet-blue flowers, to zircon, a brown to colorless mineral that when heated, cut and polished becomes a brilliant blue-white gem.
The American Heritage Electronic Dictionary is memory-resident software that works with current versions of most of the popular word processors, including WordPerfect, Microsoft Word and Works, DisplayWrite, WordStar, Multimate Advantage, XyWrite and PC Write.
It is not compatible with Windows-based programs such as Microsoft’s Word for Windows.
A new version of the Complete Writer’s Toolkit due in May will use only 10 kilobytes of memory while standing by as you write, a considerable savings over the 70 kilobytes required by the current version.
All but the grammar checking program can be called into action while you are working on a document. If the cursor is on the word you have a question about, the Toolkit will find its definition, or abbreviation, or a quote using the word or a list of synonyms. You can also enter any other word of interest. The grammar/stylebook is not word-specific. Instead, a list of subjects pops to the screen when you select that function from the Toolkit’s menu and then you scroll to the topic of interest and select it for instructions.
Computer File welcomes readers’ comments but regrets that the author cannot respond individually to letters. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.