In an era when 141 characters is considered simply too damn long, a “shorter” thesaurus makes sense – especially one that’s no further away than your Firefox Search Bar:
The Shorter Thesaurus site simply accepts the word you type, then returns shorter synonym – the perfect way to squeeze your latest Mastertweet under the limit.
Sure, it’s odd and weird and maybe even a little wrong, but if we can’t harness the power of the Internet to help us find better ways to communicate less, then why build the thing in the first place?
Best of all, a plug-in is now available for Firefox and Internet Explorer, and you can even add the Shorter Thesaurus to your Firefox search bar (while you’re on the Shorter Thesaurus page, simply click the drop-down list of search engines in your search bar and select “add THSRS”).
Bingo. You’re ready to create shorter, sweeter sentences.
The tool is found on the Ironic Sans blog site – a photographer’s blog that’s interesting enough that even a copywriter might want to add it to his RSS reader.
Keep writing (using shorter words if necessary), Tom Chandler.
Love this. I tried it out with a couple long words and didn’t get any of the “creative” synonyms tho’
Ah well. So much for that afternoon diversion, back to work.
Bonus gleaned: Learned that there is a drop down on the Firefox search bar – why had I never noticed this, uh, b4? Been using FF for years.
Thanks Tom! Fun info as usual. And thanks for the acutal blog post exceeding +gasp+ 900 characters– very refreshing. ~Lisa
Lisa Shara(Quote) (Reply)
It certainly was a struggle when I breached the 140 character mark but like a marathoner beating down the 22 mile wall, I persevered.
It takes real guts to exceed 1000 characters…
Tom Chandler(Quote) (Reply)
Cool tool, but I’d love it more if it worked in Chrome, which unlike my FF and IE, crashes less. Guess I’ll have to be retro and just bookmark it.
.-= Roberta Rosenberg´s last blog ..How to Write a Spam Comment: The 30-Second Recipe =-.
Roberta Rosenberg(Quote) (Reply)
Come to the dark side, Roberta (Linux). Crashes are rare things indeed…
Tom Chandler(Quote) (Reply)
Maybe next system, Darth Tom.
.-= Roberta Rosenberg´s last blog ..Welcome to My Blizzard, December 2009 =-.
Roberta Rosenberg(Quote) (Reply)
I love the internet for so many different reasons – but one of my favourite things about the web is how quickly a new concept (such as Twitter) spawns a whole new sphere of related techie ideas and tools, such as Thsrs. I guess it’s standing back and watching a garden of creativity. Thanks for the post and blog! Mark
Mark(Quote) (Reply)
It’s remarkable how quickly new, single-purpose apps can be developed and deployed in the cloud.
As you said, it makes for an interesting – and creative – environment.
Tom Chandler(Quote) (Reply)