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The Dictionary
By Colin J. Campbell
I own quite a few dictionaries and thesauruses; invaluable reference books that once were referred to daily. Now they gather dust on bookshelves.
I still use dictionaries the two I use the most are online dictionaries: www.dictionary.com and Free Dictionary Definitions.
They are now so easy to use I even have one on my smartphone. What used to be a cumbersome reference book now is almost instant in its answers. An online Thesaurus has also been very useful and easy to use.
Spelling was not one of my strong suits in school. You can’t learn to be a good speller simply by mental deduction, there is some memory work involved. That takes time and in those early years I was much happier fishing, skiing, hiking or swimming, in my opinion was a far better use of my time than studying words in a dictionary or learning rules of syntax. I have become a better speller, thanks to spell check. However, I still suffer from fingers that won’t type as fast as I think. I do have to admit though I don’t like the auto correction on a Samsung smartphone, one of these days it’s going to get me in big trouble.
Thanks to technology something that has been considered essential on the desk of every writer for the last two or three centuries, totally redundant. We haven’t even noticed; if you have a word spelled wrong spell check fixes it. If you need another word with a similar meaning or don’t know the meaning of the word, if you type it into Google the definition is right there instantly.
Today most of what I write is stored in ‘the cloud.’ It is easily accessed from my desktop, laptop or phone. Technology is changing how we think and how we communicate and how we keep what we have written.
The reference books gathering dust on the shelf has expanded. There is just no reason to seek them out anymore. Sadly, they were out of date the day they were printed, it is hard to part with them though, they may be part of some display someday on the way things were way back when. Way back when feels like yesterday. Oh! maybe it was.
– Colin J Campbell, CLU, CH.F.C. is managing partner of Guidance Planning Strategies Ltd. in Cranbrook. An independent wealth management firm, specializing in helping families and entrepreneurs create wealth and keeping it for generations.
