Using the Thesaurus to Find Synonyms

You can use the Word thesaurus to look up synonyms or antonyms for a word or phrase in your document. You'll probably want to use the thesaurus as you are entering text into your document (in contrast to the other proofing tools, which you often use after you have finished entering text). The following are the basic steps for using the thesaurus:

  1. Select the word or phrase. To find synonyms for a single word, you can just place the insertion point anywhere within the word rather than selecting it:
  2. Point to Language on the Tools menu and choose Thesaurus on the submenu that appears, or press Shift+F7. Word will open the Thesaurus dialog box. Here is the Thesaurus dialog box as it would appear if the word good were selected in the document:
  3. TIP
    An alternative way to use the thesaurus is to right-click a word or a selected phrase and point to Synonyms on the pop-up menu. Then on the submenu that appears, either choose a synonym or antonym (if any are displayed), or choose the Thesaurus command to open the Thesaurus dialog box discussed in this procedure.

  • In the Meanings list, select the intended meaning of the word. (Note the part of speech following most words: adj. for adjective, adv. for adverb, n. for noun, and so on.) The thesaurus will then list synonyms for this meaning in the Replace With Synonym list.
  • The Replace With Synonyms list might also display one or more antonyms for the selected meaning of the word. Each antonym will be marked with (Antonym), such as the word poor in the Thesaurus dialog box shown above.

    The Meanings list will sometimes contain the item Related Words. Selecting this item displays one or more other forms of the word in the Replace With Synonym list. For example, if the word in the Looked Up box is going, the Replace With Synonyms list would display go.

    If the thesaurus doesn't have information on the selected word, it displays an alphabetical list of words with similar spellings. You can select one of these words and click the Look Up button to find synonyms.

  • Click the best synonym (or the best antonym or related word) in the Replace With Synonym list, and click the Replace button. Here's how the Thesaurus dialog box would appear if you looked up good and then chose the meaning decent and the synonym virtuous:
  • When you click Replace, Word will replace the selected word in the document with the chosen synonym, matching the capitalization of the original word:

    TIP
    Use the Synonyms Dialog Box to Find More Word Choices

    After selecting a synonym in step 4, you can click the Look Up button to find synonyms for the synonym! (You can also do this by simply double-clicking a synonym in the Replace With Synonyms list.) Doing this one or more times might help you find precisely the word you want. Consider this scenario: You look up the word pretty and select the synonym beautiful, which is better than pretty but not perfect. You therefore click the Look Up button and find the perfect synonym, gorgeous.

    Also, while the Thesaurus dialog box is displayed, you can look up a synonym for any word by typing the word into the Replace With Synonym text box at the top of the list and then clicking Look Up.

    To return to the previous looked-up word, click the Previous button.



    Running Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business
    Running Microsoft Office 2000
    ISBN: 1572319585
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 228

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