On Sat, 9 Apr 2005, Mark A. Mandel wrote: > > --- Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote: > > > I spell reasonably well, and I've used the word in a poem, and I almost > > always look up hard words by pasting them into google, which in this case > > agreed with me. > > As someone else has pointed out by implication, Google is a lousy place to find correct > spelling. To the extent that it indexes everything on the Web, it indexes every mistake > on the Web, of spelling, grammar, fact, etc., etc., etc. I recommend, instead, a good > dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online is pretty good and free (http://www.m-w.com/). I keep > a link to it in my browser bar. By "google", I meant, "I put it into google and clicked on the definition link", which gives the American Heritage entry and often a bunch of other useful stuff like Wikipedia links. I find the AH dictionary online rather better than the M-W, and the extra stuff can be of great use Language mavens may find the following brief comment on "filibuster" of interest; it draws on the above method. http://rosenschale.blogspot.com/2005/04/filibuster-comes-from-free-booty.html