 In an era when lazy writers can find an online tool to "spin" a sentence, paragraph, or an entire article (you spinners know who you are, don't you!), the concept of a thesaurus seems as old-fashioned as a dial telephone or a reel lawnmower. Yet a copy of the printed version of Roget's Thesaurus very likely sits on the reference shelf of almost every serious writer. Roget's is unlike the simple alphabetical lists of words with their synonyms and antonyms you find online or within word-processing programs, though; and first-time users are often confused by its structure. Never let it be said that wannabe author (and 20-time winner of the DotD) Joan Whetzel isn't ready to help them... sort of... with the "hub" she called "How to Use Roget's Thesaurus."¹ |
Joan gets into her subject by explaining that
"While Word for windows has its own version of a thesaurus, and there are many online versions of a thesaurus, Roget's Thesaurus - offered in book an [sic] e-book formats - appears to be more comprehensive."
| There's an assertion we found a little insulting to M. Roget: it "appears to be more comprehensive"? What, is she nuts? Of course it's more comprehensive! From there, Whetzel launches into a description of a Roget, forgetting to mention that, unlike other thesauri, the words in Roget are not in alphabetical order. Instead, they're grouped into what Roget considered natural classifications. Joan does manage to get across that point, including listing the fifteen classifications. She then blathers on for a while about how words are arranged within the classification and the Roget numbering scheme. Good stuff, but not what we would consider a "how-to." It's more like padding to make it long enough for a proper hub. After that verbiage, Whetzel explains how to find a word using the alphabetical index and, to some extent, what the various numbers mean; followed by how to find the numerical entry. This is rather helpful, although by now we'd hope that a reasonably intelligent person would have figured it out for himself. Joan concludes that section by writing, |
"Once you've narrowed your choices down, you only need to turn to about 1 or 2 pages to find your best word choice..."...after which Whetzel launches into a discussion of the "synonym" tool in MS Word® and online thesaurus sites (although she doesn't link to any sites).
Where Joan's little how-to breaks down, as hers so often do, is that she wrote some 900 words about Roget's and never once mentioned how the book's structure lets you find antonyms! No, all she said is
"...next time you're stuck trying to disseminate an idea or when you don't know or can't find the right word or phrase, crack open your Roget's Thesaurus and let your fingers do the walking through the pages..."
| Well, sure: except how does a newcomer to use Roget's find an word's antonym? Joan never mentions this information: the words in the adjacent entry – either before or after – include likely opposites of the words in the current entry. Could Joan have mentioned this? Sure, assuming she even knew it: but she left out half the function of Roget's Thesaurus, and that's all we needed to, once again, name Ms. Whetzel our Dumbass of the Day. And if that's not enough, we had to wonder why she never italicized the name of this book... |  
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¹ The post has been deleted, but you can still see it using archive.org's Wayback machine. Its URL was hubpages.com/education/How-to-Use-Rogets-Thesaurus
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