The most common creative activity people do on their Macs is write. Be it poetry, prose, punditry, politicking, persuasion or just propelling an idea for the sake of a point, words 'get it done'. After you've written for a while, you discover there are perfect words for making your point clearly and, the more perfect words you know, the more panache and punch in your writing. The path to expanding your collection of words is as simple as explore, define and use. Exploring is simply a good habit. As you read and come across words you don't understand, look them up in a dictionary and define them. If this sounds like a pain, Apple has made it easy. If you have one of the latest versions of OS X, simply place the cursor on the selected word and press the control key while clicking down your mouse. You will be presented with a drop-down menu and a number of choices ranging from searching for the word on your hard drive or Google, to looking it up in your Mac's dictionary. Click, push, whoosh and there it is, your word defined. It works whether the new word is in an e-mail, on a website or in a PDF report from head office. It doesn't get easier than this. I've even heard reports that habitually looking up new words can raise your IQ. Another word-exploration tool is the digital thesaurus, which presents you with alternative words that may be more precise than the ones you normally use. 'Pellucid' and 'perspicuous' both mean clear, but using one rather than the other may help you write exactly what is on your mind. I use Visual Thesaurus (www.visualthesaurus.com; US$39.95) on a daily basis to expand my vocabulary. It sorts through and defines 140,000 words, illustrating appropriate ones in 3D. It's creative and inspirational. If you require a specialised dictionary or a broader thesaurus, check out Inductel's Combination Speller. It has definitions of 300,000 words, 1,200 illustrations and special dictionaries for legal, medical, technical and scientific terminology. It works within Microsoft Office or as a standalone application. Sooner or later you will need some more creative dictionaries such as colloquial, slang or rhyming dictionaries. The ones I use are free and online. Check out the University of Pomona's searchable slang database (www.csupomona.edu/~jasanders/slang/vocab-srch.html) as well as the Peak English School slang database (www.peakenglish.com/slang/slangSearch.jsp). There are dozens of online slang dictionaries covering alternative-lifestyle lingo, and a quick search will reveal the more popular ones. Likewise, there is a plethora of online rhyming dictionaries. The one I find most useful is the Write Express Rhymer site (www.rhymer.com) simply because it contains such a plenitude of phrases, both pretentious and precise. To own all these new words, however, you need to use them. The rule of thumb is that if you use a new word 10 times it will be yours. And from there, a panoply of precise and pleasing prose will permanently reside in your personal possession. E-mail Dave Horrigan at [email protected] with your Mac queries.