100 ways to improve your writing - Gary Provost 2019

Get some reference books
Nine ways to improve your writing when you’re not writing

It would be a shame to bring an entire writing project to a halt just because you didn’t know how to spell gyroscope or schnapps. So get a dictionary and keep it in the room where you write, no more than an arm’s length away. In fact, get two. Get a hardcover for its comprehensiveness and a paperback for convenience. If you prefer your reference books in digital format, you can get an e-book version or use an online app.

Also, get an encyclopedia. If you can’t afford a big set, get a single-volume encyclopedia. If you can’t afford a subscription to Encyclopædia Britannica or the like online, there are free online encyclopedias such as encyclopedia.com. You can use Wikipedia as a resource for background information or to point you to other sources, but it should not be cited as a source. It is created and edited by volunteers.

And get a thesaurus. Thesaurus means “treasury”; the thesaurus you buy will be a treasury of synonyms, words that are close in meaning to the one you want. It is a book that will lead you to that perfect word you know is loitering on the outskirts of your brain.

Roget’s Thesaurus is arranged in two sections. The first section contains hundreds of clusters of related words and phrases. The second section is an index listing all the words in the first section alphabetically and telling you where they appear in that section.

Let’s say, for example, that in a letter you want to assure the owner of the company you work for that you will most certainly try to recover the four billion dollars you lost on the papier-mâché deal, but recover isn’t quite the word you want to use, and you’re not sure what is. So you whip out your pocket edition of Roget’s Thesaurus, turn to the index, and look up recover. There you’ll find the numbers 660, 775, and 790. You turn to cluster 660 and you find recover along with its cousins rally, revive, pull through, reappear, and others. If you don’t like anything you find there, you turn to the other numbers, and the thesaurus will lead you to redeem, get back, salvage, and so on.

You can find thesauruses in paperback and hardcover, as well as online, and Roget’s is not the only one. I do not recommend the ones that are arranged solely in dictionary form. They are easier to use but only about twelve percent as useful.

After you have acquired a dictionary, an encyclopedia, and a thesaurus, you can acquire other reference books as time, taste, and money allow. Their importance depends largely on what sort of writing you do and how much.

Here are a few reference books you might find useful.

Finding Facts Fast by Alden Todd is a good reference book for any writer who has to do research.

The World Almanac and Book of Facts will tell you how many tomatoes were grown in New Jersey last year and a good many other things you might not find anywhere else.

The Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace, and Amy Wallace is fun to read and rich with useful information.

An effective online resource is refseek.com, which is a web search engine that acts as a directory of encyclopedias, directories, almanacs, and other reference resources.

The Careful Writer by Theodore M. Bernstein is an excellent grammar guide.