thesaurus – Nancy H. Doyle

My critique partner and I are working on new novels with the usual thrills and chills! Yesterday I received her gentle rant concerning a problem fraying the nerves of writers world wide. Spellcheck. Here, in part, are her comments:

“I’m literally a walking dictionary. Words that I’m familiar with, or their derivatives, don’t even show up on Spellcheck or are marked as wrong.”

Spellcheck in Word is different in Scrivener in iPage ad infinitum. Some spellchecks are US English, others British English – on and on. So, you may have to spellcheck in several softwares or just go with your gut.

“Thank goodness for my 1978 dog-eared paperback Roget’s Thesaurus, yellowed-pages held together by an old rubber band. It is still the best writing resource I own.”

While pondering this spellcheck mess, I stumbled on a fantastic thesaurus lurking on Scrivener.

Go to thesaurus. com and check it out. Not only does it have more synonyms that the Word thesaurus, but it has sorting options that I’ve never seen before except on clothing and shoe buying sites.

“I would much rather NOT have spellcheck’s screaming red lines pull me away from my initial intent and focus.”

Turn it off. Word, iPage or whatever you are using should have a toggle to toast the offending red lines.
How do you feel about spellcheck? Is it an invasive, dull-witted pain in the butt or the saving grace for your writing?

B – My Building Blocks of writing started piling up when Mom showed me how to use a thesaurus. She wanted to share one of the greatest resources for word enthusiasts ever created. I would pick a page at random, study words, learn new ones, and read for hours. The sheer number of words dazzled me. And, even now, I close my eyes, rifle the pages and, when I stop, I’m always amazed at the beautiful and miraculous variety of our language under my fingertips. Some people do this with the Bible, finding endless affirmation and hope. To me the thesaurus is the bible of words, filled with inspiration and creativity.