It would be great to have a “writer’s thesaurus”. I’m imagining the type of colorful words and phrases that a writer might use to express the highlighted word - instead of the typical set of synonyms you’ll find in a common thesaurus. If compiling and including such a list out of the box isn’t a practical request, what about a thesaurus that is connected to an online repository of user additions? That is, you could add your own words and phrases to extend the thesaurus and also “share” them with others. This would ultimately lead to thousands of writers contributing to a massive pool of colorful words and phrases. Would it not help with writer’s block?
I agree it would be a great addition but there are good word books out there for writers. In fact even the daddy of thesaurus’, Roget now offers a writers thesaurus. So it could become a well thumbed companion to keep to hand in your bag or study drawer.
amazon.co.uk/Rogets-Thesauru … or+writers
I have used a thesaurus and a software version a lot for synonyms and antonyms since I was told at an early age to try not to use the same word twice in a paragraph and absolutely never in the same line. It helps to enrich my vocabulary and often threw up some absurdly varied links which have helped send me off on flights of imagination.
There are thesaurus’ for emotions, positive and negative traits available as well.
Can anyone recommend a digital thesaurus? Preferably something with a Mac application.
Chambers Thesaurus, available from the Mac App Store … if the thesaurus that comes with dictionary.app doesn’t do it for you. And of course, it’s British English, if that would be an issue.
Mr X
Is Scrivener a service aware application?
I ask because Nisus Thesaurus is supposed to be compatible with service aware applications
I believe it is, though I have hardly ever used services with anything.
That said, I have always found the Nisus Thesaurus virtually useless, even though I’ve had it installed since Nisus first released it … even the thesaurus that comes with Dictionary.app is better in my opinion. The Chamber’s app also acts as an interface for the Chamber’s Dictionary and the WordWeb Thesaurus if you acquire and install those.
In reality, I know of nothing to match the original Roget’s Thesaurus, but apart from being on paper, it is also a supreme procrastination tool.
Mr X
Absolutely. See Section 11.2 of the User Manual for an overview. Note that access to Services is through a link under “Scrivener” itself and not one of the normal editing menu items. You can add (endlessly, it seems) to Services through a variety of sources. Many of the most useful are available through — or referenced at — Bret Terpstra [brettterpstra.com/search/?q=services]
ps