Hello Danny and Kerri, First of all, you can access multiple dictionaries on your Mac. If you open the Dictionary app using any of the ways Rachel described earlier, such as using spotlight (Command-space bar, then type the first few letters of the app, such as "d i c t" and press return) or from Finder, by using the Command-Shift-a shortcut to move to the applications folder, again typing the first few letters of the app you want, like "d i" to move to the app, then pressing Command-down arrow to open, you can open your preferences menu for that app with the Command-comma shortcut. Under your app preferences you can check boxes for any of the dictionaries that you want enabled. For example, while the New Oxford American Dictionary is selected for U.S. users, I can also check the box for the Oxford English Dictionary which uses British English conventions. Mountain Lion also added a large number of dictionaries in other languages. Once you've checked any additional dictionaries you want added, close the preferences window with Command- w. Now any additional dictionary or thesaurus that you've checked will appear as additional sources you can check, along with the your default dictionary, thesaurus, Wikipedia, etc.
However, if you only want to check "what letters American words skip", you don't need to add other dictionaries to look this up. Highlight the word you want to look up using Option-Shift-Right or Left Arrow as previously stated, but when you bring up the context menu with VO- Shift-M you want to show spellings and grammar. That window has a pop up menu button that you can navigate to and change from "Automatic by Language" to specific languages like "U.S. English", "Australian English", or "British English". You can also move to the last entry with Command-Down arrow and, if you were typing in TextEdit, choose "Open Text Preferences" to set the specific language pop-up button you want to use for spelling. (I have multiple languages and voices set up on my Mac, so my settings may not be typical.) You probably don't want to change your preferences permanently to look up alternate spellings, though. And there's also a "Learn" button in the previous spelling and grammar window if you want to add words or abbreviations and not have them flagged by the spell checker. The Multilingual Mac blog posted on Sunday that as of OS X 10.8.2, the Dictionary.app has modules for US English, British English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese, and provided links to a few sites for adding other (language) dictionaries. (Not all these sites are in English, and some of the modules may not be up to date.) Here's the link to the article: • Adding Dictionaries to Dictionary.app http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2013/01/adding-dictionaries-to-dictionaryapp.html HTH. Cheers, Esther On Jan 27, 11:31 pm, Danny Noonan <[email protected]> wrote: > Also, you can highlight a word with shift option left or right arrow, VO > shift m for context menu and the first option is look up + the word > highlighted , EG, I just selected "Context" so the option is "Look up > Context".Choosing this lets you use dictionary, thesaurus or wikipedia. This > is wonderful. Any word you want info on, bang. You write a word but find your > using it too often, go look up the thesaurus for an alternate word choice. > Google search is another option from the context menu so it's all very quick > and easy. > > My daughter says she has extra dictionaries on her school MacBook and I'd > love to know where and how to get them. I'm always trying to remember what > letters American words skip. :-) > > Now I'm off to play with the dictionary. I want to see if you can add words > etc. > > Kind regards, > Danny: > > On 27/01/2013, at 6:37 AM, Rachel Feinberg <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > Hi Kerri, > > > You can access the dictionary either through typing in the first couple > > letters of it in spotlight search, accessed with command+space. Or, you can > > navigate to your applications folder with command+shift+A, interact with > > that, and browse to the dictionary app. > > Once in the app, you can navigate to the toolbar, interact with that, and > > go to the search field. Type in the word you wish to look up, and press > > enter. Then stop interacting with the toolbar, and navigate to the html > > area. In there, once you interact, you'll find your results. > > there's probably some other keystrokes that make jumping from the toolbar > > to the html area quicker, but vo+J doesn't seem to accomplish this, so > > please forgive the long way around explanation and keyboard action. > > Hope that helps some, > > Rachel > > On Jan 26, 2013, at 11:24 AM, Kerri <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> hello, all. How do I access the dictionary on the mac both on the fly and > >> using it as an application? I am totally senile as the podcast I have on > >> the subject must e for a different or older operating system. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
