Retiring, not expiring: Confessions of a writer who still trusts an old dictionary
A few old books were the last of my belongings that I packed from my office to take home.
It was late afternoon on my last Friday in the office. I was retiring after 30 years of my full-time career with American Water.
I wouldn’t call them special or sentimental books. They were survivors. I moved from many offices and work locations. But I never threw them away.
Today, printed, paper books on a wooden shelf seem old-school, but in a good way.
There were a few books of leadership, which I wanted to read, should have read but never read. Someday. A leadership fault.
There was John Fulgham’s “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” from the 1980s. Simple, practical advice. It was a popular book in the business world. For the record, I didn’t attend kindergarten. It wasn’t required or available at the old St. Philip’s Catholic Grade School in the 1960s. We started our journey in first grade. We did OK.
There was George Vecsey’s “Stan Musial, An American Journey.” I’ve read it a few times and I will read it again. Stan is my guy. I have never heard or read a negative word about Stan the Man. I wonder if there will ever be another funeral that closes the streets of downtown St. Louis for a procession and tribute?
And there was one very large, heavy hard-bound book. It’s the third edition of the “American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.” The book takes two hands to lift and carry. It’s the classic, old-school dictionary that was used for reference to check spellings, definitions and abbreviations. When in doubt, look it up in the dictionary, and I did.
Every writer, editor or communications professional had two books at their desk: a dictionary and the Associated Press Style Book. Maybe a Roget’s Thesaurus.
There were certain words that I looked up hundreds of times like “accommodate” and “Mississippi” and “alleluia.”
I looked up words for spelling mostly. When I needed to look up a word’s meaning, that was the sign to not use the word. If I didn’t know a word’s meaning, would readers?
Technology and artificial intelligence gives us instant spell checks, word meanings and proper usage. There’s little use for paper dictionaries, style books and Roget’s Thesaurus. Right or wrong. It’s automatic. And artificial. I think that’s the word that bothers me.
As I said at my retirement luncheon, I’m retiring, not expiring. I’ll keep writing this column and other writing-related projects, for work and fun. I’ll figure it out. Suddenly, every day is Saturday in my life’s new chapter.
For the record, I had to look up “thesaurus” for spelling in that big, fat old dictionary and also to see if it was a proper name and should be capitalized.
I’ll keep the old dictionary on a shelf at home, for those kinds of moments. I’ll check it out in the big book. It’s over there, on top of the phone book, near my iPod, under the autographed framed photo of Brett Hull.
This story was originally published March 1, 2026 at 6:00 AM.
