Choosing The Right Dictionary For You

More details on how to compare dictionaries using some general criteria is presented in our article titled How to compare dictionaries?". In this article we see how one can go about choosing the right dictionary for themselves.

The first thing you should understand about dictionaries is that they come in many forms.

Hard Bound / Paper Back Dictionaries - your normal book form of dictionaries
Electronic Dictionaries - Specialized electronic gadgets that allow word lookups.
Embedded Dictionary Software - You can find the Dictionaries embedded in most of the word editing software today like Word. There is no separate purchase necessary for these in most cases.
Specialized Dictionary Software - These come as Software packages which you can install on your Laptop, Desktop, PDA or even your cell phones.
Online Dictionaries - Dictionary lookups are available on the web for free; with most major dictionary vendors offering a concise online lookup of words.
Voice Dictionaries - Dictionaries that can talk as well pronounce words correctly for you.

Based on your lifestyle and your usage behavior you should first identify which form of the Dictionary best suits you. Keep reading as there are a bunch more parameters to focus on.

The next aspect to ponder upon is why you need this Dictionary. Everyone should have access to a normal Dictionary in the first place. This is basically a Dictionary with the most common words listed. But in addition one may need more specialized Dictionaries for special word lookups. Let us try to list some of the specialized forms of the Dictionaries here.

Thesaurus - This comes to the mind first, because the second best reason to use a Dictionary is to make your writings sound more interesting and nice with new words. For this we typically use a Thesaurus to replace some of the commonly used words with equivalent words which offer either a more appropriate meaning. Or this could plainly just be to spice up your writing. Thesaurus is a form of Dictionary which lists for each word a list of words that could be used instead or to offer a more specialized meaning.
Bi-Lingual Dictionaries - These Dictionaries translate one language into another or offer meaning for words in another language. Some examples could be English-French, French-German, Hindi-Tamil, etc.
Bi-Usage Dictionaries - These Dictionaries offer translation within one language but between different dialects or regional usage. British English versus the American English is a good example where some of the words take different meaning based on which type of the language you are dealing with.
Professional Subject Dictionaries - These are specialized Professional or Subject Dictionaries which deal with one subject like the Dictionary of Computing, Dictionary of diseases and so on. Based on which profession you are in you would need one of these specialized versions handy.
Parts of the Language Based dictionaries - these dictionaries list idioms, collocations, phrasal verbs, abbreviations to name a few. They deal with a specific part of the language, these may be present in your normal dictionary buried within other forms or may be there with little meaning.
Special Purpose Dictionaries - These dictionaries come in handy based on the purpose or expertise needed in the language. The common one is Learner's Dictionary which is used by the language newbies. The other is the Picture Dictionaries where you use this to lookup how the thing looks, very handy when you are in an alien language surroundings. The other is the pronunciation dictionaries which help you learn to talk the language while looking up the meaning.

Based on the above you should choose which type of dictionary you really need, probably if this is your first time shopping for Dictionaries you may want to get more than one type of Dictionary. We will cover more aspects of how to choose in the following articles so please do visit us back.

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