Between the Bytes

My Reference Desk

Val Souza

In today’s interactive world, communication is king. No matter what your profession or line of business, impressive communication—both written and spoken—is often instrumental in elevating you above the crowd and helping you stay ahead of the ruthless competition.

Of course, in some fields, communication forms the very core. Take journalism, for instance. Our writers churn out tens of thousands of words worth of articles every week, and apart from being technically sound and providing analytical insights into high-falutin’ technologies, they also have to be letter-perfect in terms of the language. But that last part’s quite a tall order, given the profile of most technical journalists. So we need language reference aids of the widest variety and highest quality, available at our fingertips at all times.

Fortunately, in the age of the Internet the term ‘reference desk’ has taken on a whole new meaning. Whether you’re looking for synonyms or antonyms, phrases or quotations, facts or figures, all the info that you require is just a few well-directed clicks away. Over the years, I’ve discovered or stumbled upon umpteen reference sites, but of them all, I find that there are a few gems that I keep returning to regularly. They’ve helped me immensely in my writing and editing, and I’m sure they’d be useful to just about anybody who takes pride in communicating well.

The most basic language-reference point is the dictionary. Although Dictionary.com is the default online dictionary for many, I’ve always been a fan of the meta-dictionary OneLook (www.onelook.com). It submits your query to over 970 dictionaries, including scientific and other professional glossaries. OneLook also gives you a quick definition of the queried word and a link to an appropriate encyclopaedia article in the amazing Wikipedia. OneLook is one of the few dictionaries that provides for wildcards in the query, and also has a nifty ‘reverse dictionary’ option wherein you can key in a concept or definition and get back a list of words related to that concept (this latter feature is still being perfected though).

Two other superb dictionaries are Wordsmyth (www.wordsmyth.net) and The Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com). Wordsmyth is actually a dictionary and thesaurus combined into one, and its uniqueness stems from the simplicity of its definitions and its extremely easy-to-use interface. The Free Dictionary too has an in-built thesaurus, and is packed with other features as well, the best of which is the ‘examples from classic literature’ section that could lead you down a fascinating trail of discovery.

If you don’t have an always-on connection to the Net, then the WordWeb offline dictionary is a perfectly adequate substitute. It’s available as a free download from www.wordweb.co.uk. A Pro version with more features and a larger word database can be purchased for a small fee.

While writing, it’s always frustrating not being able to recall an apt word that fits in perfectly with your sentence. That’s why Peter Mark Roget was so successful, eminent, triumphant, prosperous, conquering and dominant with his Thesaurus. For those used to the original print edition of Roget’s International Thesaurus, there’s now an online version, provided as part of the Bartleby.com website. In fact Bartleby is a treasure trove of reference books, including such masterpieces as Bartlett’s Quotations, Fowler’s English Usage and Brewer’s Phrase and Fable. I find the interface rather clunky, but Bartleby is still an invaluable resource and definitely worth bookmarking.

For writers, a clever turn of phrase should come naturally, but even the best need a reference point for proverbs and idioms now and then. Cambridge Dictionaries Online (dictionary.cambridge.org) is a pretty solid resource, but sometimes you have to look beyond. I’d never really understood the old adage “Stupid is as stupid does” (made famous in the movie Forrest Gump) until I referred to The Phrase Finder (www.phrases.org.uk) and Wordwizard (www.wordwizard.com).

For facts and figures of every conceivable ilk, Infoplease.com is hard to beat. The tagline reads “all the knowledge you need” and the website sure goes all out to deliver on that promise. In addition to a dictionary, encyclopaedia, thesaurus and atlas, Infoplease is packed with almanacs to serve every interest, and beautifully structured to help you get quickly to what you need.

Many of the reference sites that were once free now slap on a charge for their premium services. As time goes by, this trend will inevitably spread to most or all of them. You may then choose to select just one or two that are best suited to your professional needs and sign up with them. Surely it’s fair to pay a fee for a research site like, for instance, HighBeam Research with its archive of more than 32 million documents from over 2,800 sources. Or perhaps you are a firm believer that the Internet and all its resources should be absolutely free. In that case you’d definitely be turning to resources like the Wikipedia, free of any charge since it has been written collaboratively by contributors from all over the world. Why not then throw in the Wiktionary, Wikiquote and Wikibooks as well. Haven’t heard of wikis as yet? Well now, that’s another story.

Val Souza, Consulting Editor

valsouza@expresscomputeronline.com