Those who have studied information architecture may be able to guess to whom I refer; those who haven't probably don't care . . .
The pompous pundit, expounding on grand concepts, once suggested that words in a dictionary could be better organized into categorical clumps (such as Aviation, Insects, Weather, etc.) so that all words relating to a particular subject would appear together.
- I ask: What if I don't know whether a mecopteron is a flying machine, a bug, or a cold front?* To which section shall I turn?
- I surmise: Here must be a man on whom the subtleties of the double entendre, the pun, and the homonym are surely lost.
- I wonder: What kind of person has never been delightfully distracted while looking up one word and finding nearby other totally unrelated but fascinating new words?
- I imagine: How big this dictionary could get with, for example, the word plane appearing under the categories of Aviation, Geometrical Surfaces, and Hand Tools, among others.
- I conclude: If it ain't broke don't fix it.
© Industry San Francisco. All rights reserved. Article content may be quoted only with attribution. www.industrious.com . . .
