This Week
This week between babbling, writing and musing I’m going to be testing out different online dictionaries. If you’re like me, you like to sound correct but have issues getting your spelling right. I really need to take a simple grammar class.
All my life there’s been a dictionary close at hand. I attribute this habit of mine to my mother, who spent tons of money on this huge set of encyclopedia’s that were leather bound, gold trimmed and sat gathering dust on a bookcase in the dinning room. No other books were special enough to recieve a place in the dinning room. I guess hence our fear of using them. I distinctly remember being the only one bold enough to peruse the unnaturally thin pages of these tomes. To this day I still love just thumbing through dictionaries and encyclopedias, mouthing the unknown words and pronouncing them in my own way, despite what the pronunciation guide calls for. This mispronunciation is a bad habit I’ve passed on to my son.
First I’m going to be trying http://www.thefreedictionary.com/
My first impression is that its very cluttered looking but CHOCK full o’ information. I like lots of information but I also feel over loaded with a bit to much and I can see myself getting distracted by the news of the day, word of the day and other fun links on the home page.
At least the word lookup so far is easy. Just type in the word you want and click search. If you’ve misspelled the word it prompts you with the correctly spelled version. The definitions are really short and to the point. I prefer the more verbose definitions that give you more information than you really need but can sometimes lead you to a different, more colorful word to use.
The links that are generated would be better placed down below the definition at least. But it IS a free service, so I can completely understand them being placed higher up on the page. Unfortunately it does distract from getting the definition. They do have to make their money to stay alive some way.
It’s nifty how the page gives you a cross reference on areas in the dictionary where this word is being used. I see this as fluff though, something that’s neat but really not relevant. It’s a pretty feature, but one I probably wouldn’t use.
I like the dictionary browser lists at the bottom! For dictionary lovers like me, it truely gives you the feel of thumbing through the dictionary. I can see myself clicking on word after word or finding new words with that feature.
On a scale from 1 to 10 I give this dictionary site an 8. It’s nice, to the point and I’m bookmarking it!
I’ll check out some more online dictionaries this week. http://a-z-dictionaries.com/ is the link list I’ll be using mainly to find my victims.