: Re: What linguistic tools do you use? I've got a Flip Dictionary, a Thesaurus, my trusty Strunk&White, and I use the almighty GOOG(le) should I ever be unsure of the definition of a word. What

@Speyer920

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I find the Oxford Collocations Dictionary very useful. It tells you which verbs tend to be used with a specific noun, which adverbs tend to be used with a verb, etc.

For non-native speakers this a real treasure which is unfortunately little known. Collocations are the kind of intuitions about a language which are very difficult to fully acquire, and they are hard to fathom from a normal dictionary.

I believe - though it's not really for me to say - that it also has a value for native speakers, both as useful form of a thesaurus - and, for creative writes, as a sort of dictionary of cliches to be used with care.

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