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[David]

Originally Posted by hayley

Someday, you're going to be reaching up to that high shelf for your thesaurus, and it's going to fall and THWACK you on the head and it will hurt.

I don't use a thesaurus -- that's why my sentences don't make sense! I apply a Lindsey aesthetic: I use the words for their abstract sound. Except in a post like this one, where I want meaning.

I can't recommend any good thesauruses (thesauri?), but I can recommend some good reference books:

Wilson Follett's "Modern American Usage" (1965)
Bryan Garner's "Oxford Dictionary of American Usage & Style" (1989)
Sir Ernest Gowers's "Plain Words/The Complete Plain Words" (1965)

I have these three & I really do recommend them highly. Wilson Follett, Jacques Barzun, Bryan Garner & Ernest Gowers are four of my heroes.