I’ve written about how to get more from OS X’s built-in spellchecker and Dictionary and Thesaurus in the past. We continute to recive requests to cover this subjeckt, so here goes!
Both OS 10.4 and OS 10.5 have a decent built-in Dictionary and Thesaurus, based on the Oxford American Dictionary. There are several ways to use it. First, you can browse to your Mac’s Application Folder and click on Dictionary. You can also launch the same Dictionary and Thesaurus as a dashboard widget.
Or, you can launch the Dictionary application by right or Command-clicking on any word, and selecting “Look up in Dictionary.”
You can also launch the Dictionary in-line in most documents by holding down the Command-Control-D keys, all at the same time with your mouse over a word (the Command key is the Apple key, next to the Spacebar.)
The spellchecker is a little different then the When you misspell a word–or type one that doesn’t appear in the standard Apple Dictionary–Mac OS X highlights it with a dotted red line. Replace the word with the correct spelling by right-clicking on it (or select the word with your mouse and Control-click on it).
You can also open the open the spellcheck pane and cruise though a document, checking for misspellings. Hold down Command-Shift-; all at the same time and choose “Find Next”.
If you know a highlighted term–such as Waitsfield–is spelled correctly, and you don’t want Mac OS X to highlight it in future occurrences, choose the “Ignore Spelling” option from the list. Mac OS X removes the highlighting below Waitsfield wherever it appears, and won’t underline this word again if you use it subsequently in your current document.
If you want all text-based Mac OS X applications to know the correct spelling of Waitsfield, you can customize the Mac OS X Dictionary to include this correct spelling of the term. To do so, choose the “Learn Spelling” option. Mac OS X adds this spelling to its Dictionary. If you later want your Mac to unlearn this spelling, I recommend downloading the free “Dictionary Cleaner app”:http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/28239/Dictionary-cleaner application. This adds a small preference pane to your System Preferences panel, where you can easily view and remove the custom words you’ve added to the Dictionary. You can download this app “by clicking here.”:http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/28239/Dictionary-cleaner
Sometimes OS X’s built in Dictionary doesn’t know the correct spelling of a mangled word. In this case, I paste the word into Google’s search field, and use Google’s very good built-in spellchecker. Note that you can also right-click (or Control-click) on a word and choose “Search in Google” to seek the correct spelling via Google.
“Wordnik”:http://www.wordnik.com/words/apple is a new way to learn about words, including spelling, definitions, and synonyms.
Wordnik wants to be a place for all the words and everything known about them. We’re addicted, that is, compulsively dependent upon, that is, devoted to Wordnik!
Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they’ve found what they consider to be “enough” information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don’t want to wait–if you’re interested in a word, they’re interested too!
Their goal is to show you “as much information as possible, just as fast as we can find it, for every word in English, and to give you a place where you can make your own opinions about words known.”
