[Worldwalker]

I don't have a beef with dictionaries. I own many, in several languages, both general-purpose and various specialized ones (medical, legal, etc.). I have a beef with GrouchoM, or at least with the way he responded to my first post.

I said I saw no need for one as an essential feature in an ebook reader -- specifically, I thought it was thrown in as an added feature to justify the price -- and GrouchoM decided that was a reason to insult me, suggest that I'm lying about not needing a dictionary at my fingertips whenever I read, sneering about how anyone who doesn't need such a dictionary must have every word in the English language memorized, etc.

And you are doing no better. "Why do you want to restrict education?" I'll answer that when you tell my whether you've stopped beating your spouse yet.

I use my ebook reader almost entirely for pleasure reading -- specifically, to read fiction. I do not need to use a dictionary for that. If someone else does, a dictionary would be useful to them. Here is precisely what I said:

I've never seen the need for a dictionary. I don't keep one at my fingertips when I'm reading a printed book, so why should I need one for an ebook? That has always struck me as a feature thrown in just because it was easy and made the device sound more sophisticated, plus it gives the feature-counting sort of reviewers more to count.

I said nothing about education. I said nothing about people not using dictionaries. Note that I said I, I, I, I -- I'm not talking about what anyone else needs or doesn't need, I'm talking about my own personal experience and my need, or lack thereof, for a dictionary while reading for pleasure, and how, as a result of that experience, I feel about dictionaries as features of ebook readers. My freaking opinion. It seems unnecessary to me to have a dictionary on my ebook reader because it's not a feature I would be likely to use. If you can't read without a dictionary, buy an ebook reader that has one. That's why they make them. But I, me, myself, yo, moi, the person sitting at this computer typing right now, *I* do not see it as an essential feature.

Maybe most people have to have dictionaries next to them when they read; I don't know, because the only people whose reading habits I'm familiar with are those of my extended family. They seem to read without needing to look words up all the time. I wasn't trying to report on some comprehensive survey of people's dictionary-while-reading needs. I said *I* saw no need for one, and felt that it was just an added feature thrown in by manufacturers because they could. As I said, to give the feature-counting reviewers something to count.

And I still don't think they're very useful in an ebook reader. At least, not unless they're the OED (and you don't need to look up "siphon").

Originally Posted by April Hare

But I didn't know quite a few words in LOTR and it helped. (Some were antiquated and foreign to me.)

I read LotR for the first time in math class when I was about 12 or 13 (paperback concealed by math textbook, and sitting in the back row). Needless to say, trying to look anything up would have given me away. So I had to figure out weird words or remember them to look up later. Come to think of it, this may have a lot to do with why I read a whole lot better than I do math.