Strategy: Visual Thesaurus
6 Keywords: Visual Thesaurus, Roget's Thesaurus, Thesaurus, Words, Vocabulary, Visualisation
"If I cannot think of a word I find Visual Thesaurus very useful as it offers a quick navigation route to the connected words. If I was using the Roget's thesaurus I would be having to go through a list. The nodes and the way they are spread out feels different. It encourages exploration. It makes the language look like a network - you do not have the feeling that there is one 'right' option. When you have a list you tend to think that the first one you see is the best.
The example of 'paradigm' shows the difference between the Visual Thesarus and Thesaurus.com where the first option was 'archetype'. In the Visual Thesaurus there is a chance to really explore a wide range of words working through a spider's web of options with the definitions and linking nodes helping in the search.
I feel the sense of discovery works well for my creative writing even for poetry, where you can divert from the original word and work with the differences between words as well as the similarities rather like a fractal diagram."
Quote
"I find it hard to work with a normal thesaurus and sometimes have a word finding difficulty. There are times when I cannot think of the word I need and cannot see the relationships between words whether they have similar meanings or there are alternatives."
- GeorgiaTip
Try Newstin if you like the idea of a visual presentation of something that is normally available in a list. In this case news is presented as a map diagram that can be explored leading to other news topics.
