Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus

After several days of research, during which I sought recommendations in books for writers and tested a dozen competitors, I have found Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus the clear winner. Compared to its rivals, it is cheaper, but printed on better paper with a more legible typeface. It has a useful thumb index and a clean layout unlike the others. Its wordlists, topics, and lists are more relevant.Best of all, it's more intuitive than the others--not only in the process of looking up a word, but in the list of words found. And at the end of most wordlists are references to related concepts that increase the smart, intuitive feel to the book, a feature lacking in the competition. I consistently found the right word and/or wordlist more easily with Roget's Bartlett's than with Roget's International 6th. The crucial step to finding the right word is when looking in the index. Fortunately, Bartlett's lists every single word in the index, whereas Roget's International 6th does not. Not finding a word in a thesaurus index is disconcerting, and substituting that word for a simpler, indexed one doesn't always lead in the right direction. Also, instead of distinguishing between nouns and verbs in the index, as Roget's International 6th does with hard-to-read type, Bartlett's streamlines the search by using descriptive phrases that distinguish, for example, "pedal" the part of a keyboard instrument from "pedal" meaning propel. This helps to pinpoint the right wordlist.Despite its unwieldy name, Bartlett's Roget's does not exactly combine both reference tools. There is only about one quotation from Bartlett's every two pages, making the quotations more of a decorative distraction than a useful reference. But I see nothing wrong with the innocuous added bonus in a thesaurus that easily beats the others.

I have, like some of my overzealous opposite numbers, gone overboard by going into a spree of pre test consumerism esp. that of books related to GRE. I have bought nearly 4 different thesauri but Barlett's Roget's thesaurus surpasses them all. For example: Crabbed which basically means irratible, ill tempered, spiteful, cranky, pettish, etc. Now, if you search for the meaning of crabbed in merriam websters dictionary (the best available on the planet) it will spit out the meaning as sour or peevish (irratible). But if you try to search for the synonyms list for the word crabbish, no other thesauri, in which happened i happened to check, except Barletts Rogets, had irritable as a synonym in its synonym list for the headword - crabbing. This is one of the several examples which have enraged me enough to discard my various other thesauri in favor of Barletts Rogets Thesaurus.

Very likely the single most important feature this book offers is exactly what we word-hunters mostly want from a thesaurus: 1) An impressively high hit rate. 2) A large number of highly useful references.Besides that, I think this book excels its competitors (painstakingly compared trying to buy the very best available one) in many another important ways.Other thesauruses and even some children's dictionaries' "how to use" sections run for several pages in rather small typeface. The fact that the "How to use" section of this thesaurus takes really sparse areas of the front and back pages of one single leaf can give you an idea of how easy to use it is. The backbone of this ease of use of course is the thoughtful organization.The book (1415 pages) is divided into two main parts: the Thesaurus itself and the Index. Want to look up a word? Look it up in the neat looking 4-columns-per-page Index (40% of the book) which is guaranteed to contain an entry for every single word and phrase contained in the book. There you get the keyword and number of all the different subparagraphs in the thesaurus where that word appears. These numbered paragraphs group together words of similar meaning. The paragraphs are subdividions within parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, verbs...) within numbered subcategories of the top 24 large groups of related subjects embodied in the thesaurus. At the end of each paragraph you may also find very useful cross references to other related categories.What if you have a tip-of-the-tongue effect or don't really know the word you want? Then you could navigate through the really easy to follow hierarchy: Subject -> Category -> Part of speech -> Numbered paragraphs<p>and enlighten yourself finding as many relevant words and cross references as there may possibly exist within the given domain and subcategory you are interested in.<p>Alphabetical and order-of-appearance indexes are provided for all the subject categories. Quotes are also provided showing how heading words are used, and also special listings that amplify the textual paragraphs.<p>But still besides this impressive hit rate and the wise and easy organization, being a computer scientist and software developer aware of user interface issues -actually mostly because of being a book worm myself- I think the making of this book also excels its competitors in features frequent users and book lovers greatly appreciate: the quality of the paper (clean white), the clarity and readability of the typeface, the thoughtful and consistent layouts (even minor details like how the ranges of paragraph numbers and keywords stand out over the page numbers at the bottom of each page).<p>I think this book is surely the best in its class for those several reasons. What is more, I think it's not just a highly valuable reference tool for native English speakers but particularly for anyone studying or using English as a second language (like this reviewer), and in general for anyone

I've used a lot of thesauruses over the years, including Roget's International Thesaurus intensively through several editions, and the new Bartlett's eclipses them all. The latest Roget's International Thesaurus is in some respects inferior to previous editions, as I was no longer finding the exact word I was looking for. I have an extremely high success rate with this new Bartlett version. It's fun just to browse around in it. Many quotations