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A lesson learned
Having recently moved, my computer is set up in a different part of the flat and on a different desk. This desk has space for some books close to hand – a luxury I didn’t have in the last apartment.
There it was an effort to check resources, especially books that were out of sight and I became lazy about consulting things. Instead I relied on the computer and in particular the thesaurus provided with Word. I thought it was sufficient.
This week, reviewing a story I’d written and needing a substitute for “skip” which I’d used twice in the same sentence I went to the Word thesaurus. It offered me:
Hop, bounce, or prance
Thinking none of them quite fitted the bill I went to my yellowed, crumbling Penguin version of Roget’s Thesaurus. The choice was enormous by comparison.
Leap, bound, jump, caper, gambol, frolic, kick, buck, spring,
Plus a whole host of other words I wasn’t sure of the meaning of.
Brilliant.
Of course half of them would have been far too flamboyant to use, but it was nice to have the choice.
I know I could have looked up the word on a computer version of Roget’s Thesaurus but I’d become too reliant on Word to bother. Much as I adore my computer, it is sometimes useful to remember there are other resources out there. Break out of the rut occasionally and surprise yourself.
Oh, and I think I chose ‘caper’. Let’s hope it’s a winner.
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