Tom Heehler

Tom Heehler is an American writer and lexicographer, best known for his critically acclaimed reference work and style guide, The Well-Spoken Thesaurus: The Most Powerful Ways to Say Everyday Words and Phrases (Sourcebooks, 2011 -- now in its fifth printing). The Chicago Tribune calls his book "A celebration of the spoken word." "Take your writing to new heights," raves the Gotham Writers Workshop. In addition to American newspaper and radio venues, Mr. Heehler's writings have attracted favorable notice internationally. He's been quoted by The Economic Times of London, The 43rd Saint Gallen Symposium in Switzerland, The Times of India, QFinance, and the TEDx Spanish Twitter feed, to name a few. Heehler -- a distant relative of Funk & Wagnalls co-founder Isaac K. Funk -- has coined such literary terms as verb displacement, intuitive description, and rhetorical tension, all of which are subjects of essays featured in his book's 50-page style guide, "Rhetorical Form and Design." He's also -- uncoincidentally -- an avid collector of English-translated works by 17th century German philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz -- the creative genius from which his next book, The Periodic Table of Divine Madness: Organized Creativity and the World's First Idea Machine, takes its inspiration.