> I would say that any persons functional literacy will be enhanced with access to a dictionary (digital or printed), unless they can the dictionary by heart.

> I would say that any persons functional literacy will be enhanced with access to a dictionary (digital or printed), unless they can the dictionary by heart. I agree! (Further it is impossible to know a good dictionary by heart, since it should be updated regularly.) I didn't mean to suggest that normal people don't need dictionaries, only that it seems a bit extreme to suggest that a large part of functional literacy (not just fluency or eloquence) would be lost by a temporary loss of access to one. > I personally confer a dictionary whenever I write more than a paragraph of text. Most people don't do that, but they should. Just this one time, I hope that it is OK for me to nit-pick and point out that you almost certainly mean 'consult', not 'confer'.