Tag Archives: Text

Get word and character counts for any selection in OS X

AutomatorIconXIf you regularly need to count the words in text that you are composing or otherwise managing, then there are several approaches for doing this. A common one is to simply copy whatever text you are interested in and paste it in a Word or Pages document, and then use the word counting features in there to count your words; however, if you find yourself doing this frequently then you can create a special service for counting words. Continue reading

How to find special characters in OS X

FontBookIconXWhen composing word processing documents, or otherwise handling text on your Mac, you might find yourself needing to use special symbols, be it something simple like a star, bullet, or check, or perhaps something more unique like a math symbol or foreign language character. To provide you with this, OS X supports a full set of unicode fonts, and if special characters are needed then there are a couple of quick ways to access and manage them. Continue reading

Enable text selection in QuickLook

QuickLookIconXApple’s QuickLook feature in OS X is a convenient option to have when browsing for files on your Mac’s hard drive. By simply pressing the space bar with an item highlighted, you can view information about it, or see its contents. If you use this to preview the contents of text files, then you might find some added convenience from the hidden option of being able to select and copy text from within the QuickLook window. Continue reading

Tip: Auto-complete words in OS X

RTFIconXAuto-complete options when using your Mac can often be exceptionally useful. For example, if you are a Terminal user, then when you enter a command you can type the first few letters of a command and then press Tab to have the Terminal show you the available commands based on those initial letters. You can do the same when typing file and folder paths in various parts of OS X. Continue reading

Turn off auto-correct in OS X

FontBookIconXWhen you either first set up your Mac, or if you have upgraded it to the latest versions of OS X, you will find Apple has changed some of the default spell checking services to auto-correct typographical errors.

While in many cases autocorrect can be convenient, there are times when it can be a burden, especially if you are intending to use misspelled or non-standard words.  Continue reading