''The Well-Spoken Thesaurus'' by Tom Heehler (

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2011), is an American

style guide A style guide is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. A book-length style guide is often called a style manual or a manual of style. A short style guide, typically ranging from several to several dozen page ...

and speaking aid. The ''

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'' calls ''The Well-Spoken Thesaurus'' "a celebration of the spoken word". The book has also been reviewed in the ''

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'', and by bloggers at the ''

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'', and the ''

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''.Seattle Post-Intelligencer http://blog.seattlepi.com/thewritersblock/2011/05/20/book-review-the-well-spoken-thesaurus/

Content

The book consists of two sections—a 50-page style guide entitled "Rhetorical Form and Design", and a 350-page

thesaurus A thesaurus (: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar me ...

section. However, what distinguishes this thesaurus from all conventional thesauri is the inclusion of what the author calls rhetorically related words, or ''powernyms''—as opposed to merely synonymous words. According to Heehler, these powernyms allow users to more readily transform rough drafts into more eloquent improvements. In "Rhetorical Form and Design," Heehler serves up 17 lessons from such writers and speakers as

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, and Cintra Wilson. Rhetorical and literary techniques covered include the objective correlative, rhetorical objectification, verb displacement, rhetorical agency, rhetorical tension, poetic articles, preposition exchange, creative number, and intuitive description.

Origins

According to Heehler, the idea for ''The Well-Spoken Thesaurus'' came to him while attending the

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, where he came to realize just how poorly spoken he truly was. And because there were no books available with which to solve his problem, he began to create a database of eloquent words. Whenever he would chance upon a well-spoken word or phrase at Harvard, he would pair that with what ''he'' would have said. After three years of doing this, of "collecting words like butterflies," he decided that his "butterfly collection" could be of use to others.

References

External links

The Well-Spoken Thesaurus Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Well-Spoken Thesaurus 2011 non-fiction books English language in the United States Thesauri (lexicography) Style guides for American English Sourcebooks books