Scoring tip for Mac users

If you are enter­ing the word “apple”¬†in to your nota­tion pro­gram for a song lyric, is it “app-le” or is it “ap-ple?” Instead of going to your dic­tio­nary or look­ing it up on the inter­net, Mac users have an easy way to find out via the dic­tio­nary wid­get that comes with OS X. Just hit F12 and type in the word, and the wid­get shows the proper hyphen­ation, as shown in this picture.

I had to do this just today with the word “scholar” for an Emily Dick­in­son poem. Is it “scho-lar” or “schol-ar?” A quick look at the wid­get reveals that the sec­ond option is correct.

It’s a tiny detail, but those who make money in score copy­ing can dis­tin­guish them­selves by pay­ing atten­tion to these lit­tle extras. It lends your score an extra sheen of professionalism.

PC users, is there a sim­i­lar option? Let us know in the com­ments section.