Re: Read it and weeep (sic)


R J Valentine wrote:
On 20 Aug 2006 06:27:14 -0700 saharvetes@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

} dontbother wrote:
}> Read it and weeep (sic)
}>
}> From today's Washington Post:
}> http://tinyurl.com/lmdxr
}> Writing Off Reading
}>
}> By Michael Skube
}> Sunday, August 20, 2006; B03
...
}> may not own a dictionary, and if they do own one, it doesn't get much
}> use. ("Why do you need a dictionary when you can just go online?"
}> more than one student has asked me.)
}
} What's wrong with this? Looking up words in an online dictionary (or
} several of them) *is* more convenient than doing the same in a printed
} dictionary.

What's wrong with it is you miss the chance of learning ten or twelve
neighboring words for free every time you look up a word, and you may miss
the usage notes and the flip to the Indo-European section in the back. So
at best you might just learn what you set out to learn.

Considering just the 1993 edition AHD3 that I have on my computers, if
you are so inclined, you can click on right and left arrows to examine
alphabetically neighboring words. You also get to read the usage notes,
which appear at the end of definitions. By double clicking on any word
in a definition, you are automatically transported to its definition,
so if you have limited time, you are more likely to pursue these. Aside
from that, you can search all the headwords with wild cards, getting a
big group of related words, or seeing all the forms of a word. You can
search all the definitions for the appearance of a word in an etymology
(as long as it doesn't have non-standard characters in it- I would hope
they'd have corrected that by now).
I have a 1971 paper AHD that weighs about five pounds. I haven't used
it for years, except occasionally to see how a definition might have
changed. On a four pound laptop, I have the AHD3, the M-W dictionary, a
good Spanish dictionary, and a dictionary that has Spanish German and
French to English. That's without being networked. When networked, the
possibilities just explode.
It's true, it doesn't have the Indo-European section or the little
pictures, but the chance of learning more is greater with computer
dictionaries.

--
John

.

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