Thesaurus feature for electronic typewriters

Claim 1

A thesaurus feature for an electronic typewriter having an electronic spelling dictionary memory and an electronic thesaurus memory, said typewriter including a keyboard for transmitting character signals to said spelling dictionary memory and said electronic thesaurus memory, said spelling dictionary memory and said electronic thesaurus memory each having a data base stored therein and control signals stored in another electronic memory, a plurality of words are stored in a data base in said spelling dictionary memory and each of said words including a special code character immediately following each word which also appears in the data base of said thesaurus memory, the data base being stored in the said thesaurus memory being words for serial access as lists of words that are synonymous with each other with the lists including a separator code identifying the part of the speech of the synonyms, word separator codes and list separator codes, means including said keyboard for inputting an input word for which synonyms are desired, means governed by said keyboard for initiating a thesaurus operation, scanning means for scanning the data base of said thesaurus memory, means for retrieving said words from said data base by matching the input word, whereby the presence of synonyms for said input word is determined by the position of the list, word and part of speech code, and display means for sequentially displaying any synonyms found for said input words.