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	Use a Dictionary       Take Good Care of Yourself It Takes a Village Someone's Life Trust Your Gut! Jargon Getting Fired Pain Fear Pleasures Pitfalls What It Takes When the Going Gets Tough Intellectual Archeology NoNoNoNoNoNo NoNoNoNoNoYes Interviewing The Best Writing is Rewriting Use a Dictionary Carefully Chosen Language Inspiration... Running a Home-Based Business Quality Control Coming Up with Ideas Selling the Story Reading Paying Attention Play Dates Getting It   Whenever I teach journalism -- whether to undergrads or adults in their 60s -- I make a suggestion that always gets a laugh. It's not supposed to, but I keep making it anyway. Use a dictionary. As I write these words, a small dark blue book lies to the left of my computer. It's the Pocket Oxford Dictionary, fourth edition, from 1964. I bought it in fourth grade and the endpapers are full of my drawings and doodles and my carefully penciled 9-year-old signature. Using it, I read "The Scarlet Letter" in eighth grade, barely able to get through a paragraph without flipping wildly through its thin tissue pages in a frenzied search for comprehension. Our dour Scottish teacher must have required the patience of a saint as we struggled in class through the book, but she insisted we read and understand. That trusty little dictionary turned huge polysyllabic terrors into treasured new additions to our vocabulary. Thanks to the dictionary, no text could scare me. Even today, I use it. It's a midget compared to another reference I own. Yet, time and time again I reach for the huge (753 pages) Webster's New Dictionary and Thesaurus and go back instead, frustrated, to the old battered Oxford. Not all dictionaries are equal. I love Oxfords, but I'm Canadian with a British heritage. Browse through your local bookstore some afternoon and find one, or several, you like. Why even use a dictionary? My students think spell check is the answer to everything. It merely tells you (if it catches the error) you've made a mistake of orthography (That word, once more, is in my Oxford, but not in my Webster's.) A dictionary also saves you from using a word that does not convey the meaning you intend, and your primary task is to choose words precisely. I also love discovering unfamiliar words and meanings. My little Oxford tells me that Russia is "a leather prepared with birchbark oil." O.K. That G.P.I. stands for General Paralysis of the Insane. That a Joe Miller (who?) is a stale joke... How about a jaconet? (A cotton cloth, especially waterproofed for poulticing.) Or, one of my all-time favorite words, pelisse, a woman's long mantle, hussar undress jacket (who knew?) or child's outdoor garment. Funny, it's just across the page from pedantic....