communication department

By Charles R. Crawley, Public Relations Manager, Eastern Iowa Chapter

“Contestants are given a definition and have to choose the correct answer from four choices.”

•  Define-a-Thon
•  Spelling Bee
•  Scattergories
•  Pictionary

If you selected Define-a-Thon, then you are correct! The Eastern Iowa Chapter STC held its first ever Define-a-Thon on November 13, 2007, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

What’s a Define-a-Thon?

The Define-a-Thon is a new word game from the editors of The American Heritage Dictionary. The idea is that you can spell a word without knowing its meaning. So why not develop a competition where the contestant has to pick the right word after its definition has been given?

Our chapter has held a spelling bee before, so we thought a Define-a-Thon might work as a chapter meeting event. So we first obtained the necessary definitions by contacting the American Heritage editors. There was no charge for the definitions, which the editors e-mailed to me after I explained to them what we were doing. Then we asked Houghton Mifflin, the publishers of The American Heritage Dictionary, to see if they would donate a copy of the new fourth collegiate edition as a prize for the winner. They kindly obliged, and we were in business.

A Successful Event

We held our Define-a-Thon as an evening chapter meeting and fourteen people, including me, the Master of Ceremonies, showed up. Most were chapter members, but a few nonmembers attended also.

The Define-a-Thon comes with three sets of definitions: Easy, Harder, and Difficult. We held a practice round and then proceeded with the Easy set. A few participants fell out after twenty-five minutes, and then we moved to the Harder set. Everyone was readmitted to this round, which was a good thing, since people enjoy participating as opposed to spectating. The Harder set eliminated more people quickly, until we came to a winner. We had one more round with the Difficult set (again with everyone participating), and quickly had a winner there. The two winners faced off, the winner of the Easy/Harder set and the winner of the Difficult set, with the final winner answering four of the five definitions correctly.

All the participants indicated that they felt there was much more interaction than our usual meetings, and that it was worth repeating. Suggestions were made as to how to improve it, which included adding more rules for spelling and interjections and comments, in addition to using a projector to see how words are spelled.

Other STC chapters might consider holding a Define-a-Thon. As wordsmiths, most technical writers care more about words and their meanings than your average person, and you can have a great time at such an event testing your knowledge, and learning some new words. It was not difficult to set up, once we got the definitions and the dictionary. The MC needs to spend a little time going through the definitions, since some of the pronunciations can be tedious. But Houghton Mifflin provides excellent notes for the MC. We had people RSVP ahead of time, which is not a bad thing to do, since the optimal number of contestants is between sixteen and twenty. So the Define-a-Thon probably works best for smaller chapters. If you are interested in exploring the idea for your chapter, please feel free to e-mail me.