After making an effort to use the Westminster Bible Dictionary (WBD) in my daily bible study using Logos, I am routinely frustrated at how persnickety the search function is. Allow me to explain the problem and a typical day with the WBD.
Words listed in the WBD, perhaps because of the date of its publishing, are spelled with a series of hyphens and apostrophies, denoting the use of prefixes, suffixes, and syllables. In certain limited contexts, I could imagine that being useful. The trouble though emerges when I attempt to search for a word that is longer than one syllable. You see, one cannot simply search for a word in the WBD using the Logos search bar. All those apostophies and hypens have to be accounted for in the spelling. Annoying, but okay. Now, sounding out each word to account for these parameters, I spell the word. Another problem emerges. The search function ceases to work the moment I use a apostophy. In fact, even if I spell the word exactly as it appears in the dictionary, the search function will still fail to redirect me to the word.
Here is an example: suppose we want to search for 'Wayfaring Man' in the WBD. The first thing we note is that it has both multiple syllables and a suffix. So we must render it Way'far-ing Man. I begin to spell it and get as far as 'Way'. As soon as I get to the apostophy, the predictive search function stops and any attempt to proceed with the spelling is for naught. woe is us.
I am hoping that this problem could be addressed for this and any resource which uses the notation seen in the WBD. I think this will go a long way for older resources that you (Logos) might plan to digitize and make available.
Many thanks and God bless.
