Every Microsoft Word user is familiar with Word’s squiggly red line used to highlight misspellings and how it will suggest correct spellings if you right-click the misspelled word. What many users are not aware of is that Word will assist you to determine whether you are using the correct word or should be using a synonym.
To check whether you are using a word properly according to its definition, right-click the word and choose Look Up, and then Encarta Dictionary from the short-cut menu. [Encarta Dictionary is used for North American English.]
This will open the Research Pane with a list of definitions. You can then read through the definitions to see if you are correctly using the word in question. At the bottom of the list are some hyperlinks with other reference sources.
If like you find that like you are always like using the same word like in a report you might want to like look for similar words that like have the same meaning, like you know synonyms. Right-click the word and choose synonyms from the short-cut menu. Unlike the previous example, you can either select one of the choices that Word presents, or choose to open the full Thesaurus in the Research Pane.
Word will also attempt to translate a word into certain non-English languages by choosing Translate from the right-click short-cut menu. Unfortunately, Latin is not one of the choices.
You can also access the Research Pane by clicking on the icon in the Review tab of Word’s ribbon.
Users of Word 2003 can access the Research Pane by selecting Tools==>Research from the menu bar.
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