Other uses for alphabetical order
At the end of this exercise you will: • Have looked at other books that use alphabetical order. • Have practised us...
At the end of this exercise you will: • Have looked at other books that use alphabetical order. • Have practised using an index. • Have looked at how reference information is organised.
Answers are on the last 2 pages of the exercise.
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Synonyms Different words sometimes have the same meaning. The following words have the same meaning as the word ‘dictionary’. glossary
lexicon
thesaurus
vocabulary
Words that are spelt differently but have the same meaning are called synonyms. Spelt differently Y N O N Y Means the Same. Using synonyms makes your writing more interesting. Look at the text below. Write it out again using synonyms for the word nice. Does this make a difference to how the text reads? It was a nice, sunny day. Mary was having a nice time. Her nice boss had given her a nice day off. She was having a nice trip to the countryside. The sun was nice and warm. She had a nice picnic with her.
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Thesaurus The word thesaurus comes from Greek and means a storehouse of knowledge. A thesaurus is a dictionary of synonyms. A thesaurus also gives an antonym for each word. An antonym is the opposite meaning of a word. An antonym of hot is cold. A thesaurus is useful for finding different words to make writing more interesting. A thesaurus is also handy for doing crosswords and word puzzles. A thesaurus is arranged in alphabetical order, like a dictionary. A thesaurus entry looks like this: cold adj cool, chill, chilly, freezing, icy, frozen, wintry, raw, biting, nippy HOT antonym Fill in the table below. If you do not have a thesaurus guess what the antonym (opposite) of the word might be and check it in a dictionary. WORD HOT HAPPY LIGHT LOVELY
SYNONYM
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ANTONYM
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Glossary A glossary is another type of dictionary. The word glossary comes come the Greek word ‘glossa’ which means tongue. A glossary is sometimes called a dictionary of terms. A glossary is a list of words that are to do with a single subject. For example, a cookery book will have a glossary of words about cooking. A glossary is often found at the back of a reference book. It will be arranged in alphabetical order just like a dictionary. A glossary is useful when you are reading a reference book and need to check the meaning of a new word. The following words are words you could find in a cookbook glossary. Put them in alphabetical order. Pastry Roast Bake Boil Grill Baste Simmer Stew Sauce Stir Cook
Using an index An index is found at the back of a reference book. An index is arranged in alphabetical order. An index helps you to find a particular subject quickly without having to read the whole book. This is a section from the index of The Golden Pages. F Fabrics ……………………………………… 723 Fabrics – printing See also Textile printing……………………….… 1176 Fabrics – wholesale ……………………….... 724 See also Textiles …………………………..……...1176 The index shows what pages have information about fabrics. It also gives a synonym for fabrics – textiles. This helps to find out all the information you might be looking for. An index will list every mention of the word you are looking up and the page it is on. How many pages about fabrics are there in the Golden Pages?
Where can you find information about fabric printing?
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Using a reference book. Alphabetical order is used in a lot of different reference books. The best way to practise using alphabetical order is by using a dictionary. It is the reference book you will use most often. An encyclopaedia is a book of facts. It is arranged in alphabetical order. An encyclopaedia is often a very large book. It will have an index at the back listing all the pages on which a key word is mentioned. Using the index in a reference book is often the best way to find information quickly. The following are examples of reference books. Find the words in the wordsearch. dictionary Golden Pages travel guide D D A Q G N E Q B T
I I S W O A N W N H
Y C D T L L C E H E
M T F R D A Y R Y S
atlas encyclopaedia phone book A I G A E F C T O A
N O H V N T L Y G U
U N J E P Y O U O R
A A T L A S P I L U
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L R K G G M A O D S
DIY manual thesaurus
A Y L U E O E P M P
D H M I S K D L K D
S J B D A O I K A U
E K V E B P A J N O
P H O N E B O O K P
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ANSWERS Synonyms Your writing might look something like this. It was a nice, sunny day. Mary was having a great time. Her lovely boss had given her a nice day off. She was having a pleasant trip to the countryside. The sun was good and warm. She had a beautiful picnic with her.
Thesaurus Hot – warm – cold Happy – joyful –sad Light – bright – dark Lovely – pretty – unpleasant
