Quick Reference

The Verizon Yellow Pages was delivered to my front door the other day. I immediately put the very large book in the recycling bin. I laughed as I did this because I could not remember the last time I used a traditional copy of the Yellow Pages. In fact, I don't often use any physical reference book these days... everything seems to be available online. Below is a list of what I consider to be the best and most useful reference sites on the internet, in no particular order:

• Encyclopedia - Wikipedia
• Dictionary - Merriam-Webster or Dictionary.com
• Thesaurus - Thesaurus.com
  
• Rhyming Dictionary -RhymeZone
  
• Financial/Investment Dictionary - Investorwords.com
  
• Atlas - nationalatlas.gov
  
• Maps - Google Maps
  
• Yellow Pages - Yahoo! Local Yellow Pages
  
• Movies - The Internet Movie Database
  
• Real Estate Values - Zillow.com
• Automated Translation - Google Language Tools
• Notable Birth Days - Born Today
• Finance Web Site - Yahoo! Finance or Google Finance
• Urban Legends - Snopes.com or The Straight Dope
• Names (popularity over the past 130 years) - NameVoyager
• Unpublished 800 Numbers - Hard to Find 800 Numbers
• Reverse Phone Number Lookup - Reverse Phone Directory
• Recipes - Food Network.com

Some other sites worth checking out (although they may not fit into a strict "reference" category):

• wikiHow's How To Use English Punctuation Correctly
• Foreign Service Institute Language Courses
• 13 Things that Do Not Make Sense
• Timeline of Trends and Events (1750-2100)
• Common Errors in English

Do you use any other/additional online references? Leave a comment and let me know.