Thesaurus,amp,#58,One,the,Grea computer Thesaurus: One of the Greatest Tools Rarely Used
Gone are those times when the companies and the organisations didn't need a hi-tech system to handle them. Owing to the considerable increase in the business sector and thus, an enormous increase in the complexity of the organisational struc ----------------------------------------------------------Permission is granted for the below article to forward,reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website,offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as longas no changes a
Anyone with experience in written communication has had theexperience of producing a document with typos and grammaticalerrors. The good writers never say a document is completewithout running a spell check first. Those that use MicrosoftWord can check spelling and grammar at the same time. Indeed,many documents have been saved by the spelling & grammar checks(I certainly use it on all of my articles). But, to be a great writer, one must take it a step further thanjust making sure that a document is grammatically correct. Tomake your documents better than just error-proof, you must makeuse of a thesaurus a tool that allows you to find synonyms(terms with same meaning) and antonyms (terms with oppositemeaning) for a particular word or phrase. In the old days,thesauruses were only available in book form; now, they areincluded in just about every word processing program not themention on the web (check out www.thesaurus.com.) Its a pitythat theyre so rarely used that its not even in the Tools menuof Microsoft Word anymore when you install it (you have toeither add it yourself or remember Shift + F7!) However, it is very easy to abuse a thesaurus. Some writers haveso much fun replacing words, but confuse their readers and neverrealy properly convey your thoughts. The question is simple -what is the correct way to use a thesaurus to make yourdocuments great? As you consider the following thesaurus tips,keep in mind that the main goal in using it is to make yourdocument flow better. Know When to Use It Using a thesaurus means that youre reachingoutside of your normal vocabulary to make yours thoughts soundbetter. The wrong time to do this is when youre trying toconvey a personal message or if youre trying to make a simplestatement. A good rule is to never use it on a one-pagedocument. The exception is when you need to replace a catchwordthat youve already used in another sentence (or the samesentence); even then, you can usually re-phrase a sentencewithout having to reach for the thesaurus. Another guideline isto only replace one important word per page with the sameexception as before. Dont choke your reader. Quality, Not Quantity Its a lot of fun to look for the biggestwords we can find to replace with; but its not productive. Thegoal is to find the word that makes the rest of the sentencesound its best; this also means that you only want to replacewords that make a sentence unclear. Its never fun to read adocument that is full of words that you dont understand or thatyou have to stop to regroup after each sentence. You also needto keep your audience in mind when choosing words. Focus on Your Main Thoughts When youre trying to decide whichwords to replace, its usually good to start with your mainpoints. Remember what you learned in your writing class: Eachparagraph should have a main sentence with the remainingsentences supporting it. Pick out your main sentences from eachparagraph and make sure that they sound clear. From here, youshould be able to pick out the ones that need attention. The Second Opinion Never underestimate the power of aproofreader. They will always notice things that you dontbecause writers tend to focus primarily on the topic theyrewriting about. My proofreader (which happens to be my lovelywife) constantly comes up with concerns that I never thinkabout. Most importantly, she always points out the words thatdont make sense to her and usually has a suggestion for areplacement. In the end, the goal is for a document is for it tomake sense to your reader; so after youve used your otherthesaurus tools, be sure that your final test comes from areader, as well. I find the thesaurus to be one of the greatest tools that we canuse to put our documents over the top. Perhaps its decline inpopularity is mainly due to many of us not knowing how to use itproperly. Maybe this article will help the thesaurus to make acomeback. Well, at least now your documents can be negated ofimprecision.
Thesaurus,amp,#58,One,the,Grea