American Heritage Electronic Dictionary, Release 1.01 Copyright 1991 David Batterson You've probably seen a spell-checker program in the past that was labeled a "dictionary." Of course it wasn't, since it could only correct the spelling of words. Now we do have true dictionaries for the PC. One of them is the American Heritage Electronic Dictionary from the excellent book publisher, Houghton Mifflin Co. In my review, I'll call the software "AHED." (I chose this name since AHED is used for the program and subdirectory names.) AHED is compatible with most popular word processing programs, including WordPerfect 5.1, Microsoft Word 5.0, WordStar 6.0, PC Write 3.0 and many more. While you'll most likely want to use your own word processor, AHED comes with Houghton Mifflin's Writer program too. I didn't take the time to evaluate it, but it looks like your basic low-end word processing program. AHED features definitions for more than 116,000 words, as well as usage advice, definitions, pronunciation, hyphenation points, synonyms, idioms and etymologies. It also includes Roget's II Electronic Thesaurus, with more than 500,000 synonyms. But wait, there's more; no Cubic Zirconium, but there are some clever features. The SearchText mode lets you use keyword instructions. You may use wildcard characters to find words that have common letters, or the anagramming function to locate anagrams. There's "recycling," the ability to move from a dictionary or thesaurus entry to another with a keystroke. AHED is a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) program that requires up to 140K (this is variable). With all the words and definitions, you're looking at a minimum of 3Mb free hard disk space. AHED will work with DOS versions 2.1 or higher. If you use AHED as a standalone program, you only need 256K RAM. Otherwise it requires a minimum of 512K, but 640K is always better. After the no-nonsense installation program, you run AHED by simply typing AHED at the DOS prompt. In this default mode, it uses only 43Kb RAM. Using switches after the AHED command, you can vary the amount of RAM by 10Kb increments, up to 133Kb. Or you can use AHED /S, /M or /L, for small (43Kb), medium (93Kb) or large (133Kb) memory usage. AHED's default hot keys are easy enough to remember: D - Main Menu " " L - Lookup " " T - Thesaurus " P - Paste You can customize the hot keys if there are conflicts with other TSR programs you may be using, or with your word processor. To look up words, there are two methods. One is to invoke the Main Menu with D, select LOOKUP, and then type in any word. The other method is just like spell-checking a word: put the cursor anywhere on a word, and then press L. To return to your document, just press , press twice, or highlight EXIT in the Main Menu and press . You then paste a word quickly with the other hotkey. The SearchText feature of AHED is perhaps the most powerful. It lets you find words when you know only a vague meaning or a definition, using the Boolean Operators AND, OR and NOT. For instance, to find out what a Thai dollar is called, you would type in "Thailand AND currency" to obtain the answer: "baht." AHED is a beneficial program, for students, secretaries, journalists, lawyers, consultants, and anyone who writes on a PC. The list price wasn't provided, so check with various software dealers for the best street price. For more information, contact Houghton Mifflin Co., Software Division, One Memorial Dr., Cambridge, MA 02142; 617-252-3000. # David Batterson has been a writer for many years. Contact him (using your favorite words) via MCI Mail: DBATTERSON.