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Roget's Descriptive Wordfinder: A Dictionary/Thesaurus of Adjectives
by Barbara Ann Kipfer, Ph.D

Writer's Digest Books Hardback ISBN:1582971706 Adult Reference
Four Stars Out of Five
Contact reviewer: hojonews@aol.com

@ Book Description

Whether they’re working on a full-length novel or short magazine article, writers can make their work fresher and more evocative with Roget’s "Perfect Word" Thesaurus. It’s the essential guide for choosing accurate, specific words--the key to any piece of good writing.

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@Book Review

Don't let the Word Thesaurus discourage you
Writer's aid that works when word's thesaurus doesn't cut it

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered

I heard fellow writers say, "I never use a thesaurus" so often that I began to wonder if some of them might not want to admit that they got "help" with their writing from a musty old book. That prompted me to ask for more information.

What I heard most was that they simply never found a word they liked better than the one that originally came to them, or that the list of words in their thesaurus did not inspire new patterns of thought.

I believe that Barbara Ann Kipfer's book functions better than a thesaurus on both counts. It will work to an author's advantage often enough to encourage her to keep picking up her Roget's Descriptive Wordfinder: A dictionary/Thesaurus of Adjectives.

Kipfer reminds us that her book works much like the human brain, by categorizing. She's right, of course. Because we memorize the alphabet when we are young, we think we are naturally alphabetical animals. We are wrong. We had to learn specific skills for using a dictionary or putting a Rolodex into order, but we group and classify the entire world rather naturally.

I found that one of the most useful ways use Kipfer's combination dictionary and thesaurus is look up a word in my old thesaurus and then cross-reference what I found there to this new one. If you look up "receding" in a thesaurus and find "retrogression," you could go to Kipfer's book and find other entries that were, indeed, in your thesaurus, but you'll also find "crablike." That certainly suggests a simile better than another Latinate word like "reflex" or "retrograde."

I also was in awe of Kipfer's approach to categorizing in her addendum. She calls it a "Quick Word Finder". It uses very broad categories like Appealing-Unappealing. There one finds everything from the mundane (affluent, alluring, yummy) to the really off-beat (fiddle-footed and Circean.)

This reference may be order at online bookstores or call 800-448-0915.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards. Her newly released Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remember has won three. Her writing has been praised for its "literary quality." She admits to using references when she writes. Learn more at: http://carolynhowardjohnson.com

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