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Virtual Ink : A Reader's Web Guide : Reference The Thing Itself.2
A Lexicomaniac's Short Shelf
A Word To The Wise
Dandy Little Disquisitions
Was Joyce Obsessed With Perturbation?  Old FriendsOne of the more primitive references on our virtual shelf is The Hypertext Webster Interface (HWI). This searchable dictionary is, by its proprietors' own admission, pretty simple-minded. If the word for which you seek a definition is too long or complex, HWI won't be able to handle it. If you've suffered a fit of temporary amnesia and have forgotten the referent for cat, however, you're in good shape; in fact, you'll be up to your whiskers in definitions and citations for everything from Felis domestica to cat o' nine tails. Want to see for yourself? Give it a try; enter your word here: Roget's Internet Thesaurus ups the ante nicely. Choices abound: search for a word, choose from alphabetical lists of entries, or select a category like "Words Expressing Abstract Relations" or "Words Relating To Space." We gave the site a workout and found it to be both fast and reliable. We'll keep our print edition of Roget, but it may gather serious dust now that the online version is available. A volume that should never gather a single mote on any writer's (or speaker's) shelf is Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. This slim and oh so to-the-point volume is indispensable; carry it in your vest pocket always. (While it probably would not stop a bullet, unlike the New Testaments said to be carried by WWI doughboys over their hearts, it could well save your reputation as a literate human being.) The collaborative editions wherein Mr. White updated Mr. Strunk are not available online, but the 1918 original is, courtesy of Columbia University's Project Bartleby (which also offers H.W. Fowler's 1908 The King's English and John Bartlett's 1901 Familiar Quotations: "a collection of passages, phrases, and proverbs traced to their sources in ancient and modern literature"). And should you be of the opinion that such timeless advice to writers as Mr. Strunk's "form the possessive singular of nouns with 's" is too elementary to bear repeating, you haven't being doing enough web surfing. Now that Mr. Strunk has imbued us with his sense of style, let's dig up something to say. The Skeptic's Dictionary (& Guide To The New Millennium) has something to offend everyone -- and is, therefore, an invaluable tool for essayists and cocktail circuit conversationalists alike. Its skeptical author, Robert T. Carroll, a professor of philosophy at Sacramento City College, takes aim here at everything from alien abductions and UFOs to Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard. Select your bone of contention from alphabetical lists of initials or phrases, a table of contents, or a search interface. And if you just can't wait to launch your rebuttal, Dr. Carroll has thoughtfully included a readers' forum that already has sparked some lively give-and-take with the author. (You might want to take a quick look at MLA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources before you go, just in case you might someday want to cite your argument in your CV.) Our California debunker of New Age neologisms owes a great debt to an Ohio journalist whose career spanned the turn of the last century: Ambrose Bierce, author of The Devil's Dictionary, another slim but delicious volume. Bierce's dictionary, the author explains in his preface, "was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. In that year a large part of it was published in covers with the title The Cynic's Word Book, a name which the author had not the power to reject or happiness to approve." Maybe the original title given his work is what drove him simply to disappear (some say to Mexico, others to Glory) in 1913. Wherever he went, he left behind a wise and bitter gem, full of acerbic definitions such as these, drawn from entries under the letter F:
Before we ask you to board the omnibus named "Meta Lists" below, we must permit ourselves a slight lexicomaniacal detour into film -- or, to be precise, snippets of movie dialogue. I know we're all readers here, but a little time spent sitting in the dark staring at a screen larger than the little alien on which you read these words can be therapeutic, too, can't it? Sure it can. If you're afraid someone might see you at the concession stand and think less of you for bowing to a thoroughly modern urge, the pundits at a site called Greatest Quotes from Great Films are standing by to justify as research your temporary lapse from respectability. By clicking on a line of snappy patter, you'll reveal a darn near scholarly little essay putting the famous words in context and explaining everything. The vintage movie posters and other graphical embellishments are nice, too. Now, if you will, please step aboard our tour bus . . . Meta Lists: Links & Links To Links A Web of On-Line Dictionaries (Search interface & links to some 350 dictionaries in some 100 languages; a site both handsome & monumental) http://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard/diction.html Lexical Research and Dictionaries (Part of the much larger WWW Virtual Library: Humanities) http://www.hum.gu.se/w3vl/w3vl.html#h7 References & Dictionaries (Part of an exhaustive list compiled by students at Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers in New York) http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/referenc.html#dict >> More? Right this way, please. . . Virtual Ink is Clearinghouse approved. The Argus Clearinghouse is a selective collection of topical online guides.  Suggest A Site or Report A Dead Link   
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