Here’s the situation: You’re working on a document for work, and suddenly you realize that you’re using the same terms over and over again. However, you can’t think of a different way to describe what you’re writing about. What can you do? You can either whip out the dead weight that is a standard printed thesaurus, or you can simply use the one that is included in Microsoft Word.

It seems obvious. However, you would be surprised how many people don’t know about this useful tool. Part of that is probably because it is slightly hidden. To invoke the thesaurus, go to Tools -> Language -> Thesaurus. Not the most obvious of paths (at least to me). Once the Thesaurus Dialog is opened, simply type the word that you want to find alternate words for into the Insert text box. Then, click Look Up.

This will populate the Meanings text box with possibly several different contexts in which the word can be used. Making a selection in this dialog will bring up the list of corresponding synonyms in the Replace with Synonym text box. Finally, select the synonym that you want to use and click Insert. This will insert that word into your document. Just like that, no more repetitive terms!

This is a good way to avoid comments such as “Cut down on the use of the word xxx.”, or “Can we word this a different way?”. As we all know, the less comments you have to deal with, the better.