SmileOnMyMac Blog

“i” before “e” except after “c” — if you have trouble remembering this rule, you might be interested in the free autocorrection snippet file we released today. It contains over 100 common typos and misspelled words.

The misspellings and typos are set up as “abbreviations” that get replaced by their correct versions. You can also add your own most common typing and spelling errors; just add the error to your abbreviation list with the correction as the snippet content.

The file has some non-spelling typos in it too; “andthe” or “itis” get expanded to “and the” and “it is”. For those whose pinky finger never quite stretches to the apostrophe, “couldnt” and “shouldnt” will be corrected too.

Download the file and follow the steps posted to link it to TextExpander. And then stop worrying about whether “e” comes before or after the “i” in receipt.

Mark, a doctor in Texas, had a great idea about watermarking documents:

Watermarking a PDF is an awesome feature. In the past I’ve needed to send out my C.V. as a PDF to different agencies, but then they would broadcast fax my C.V. to facilities where I might already be working, irritating the agency with whom I’ve already contracted. Custom watermarking the PDF allows me to attribute to which agency the C.V. came from.

How do you do it with PDFpen? Here are the instructions that Greg sent to Mark:

A watermark can be an imprint, scribble, piece of text, or even an image with transparency.

For example, with a PDF open in PDFpen, drag an image to watermark with onto the first page and position it how you like. Next, choose “Imprint All Pages as First” from the Script menu (right end of PDFpen menu bar), and the watermark will be applied to every page. Note that you can also make a graphic transparent by opening the Properties window, and clicking the color button, and adjusting the Opacity slider, so this way text can show through behind the watermark graphic.

Awesome, indeed. Thanks, Mark, for pointing out another great way to use PDFpen!

A great tip from Dr. Clint, who specializes in cell biology and biochemistry:

TextExpander (formerly released under the cooler name, Textpander) is a great application, and I could not imagine using my Mac without it.

As a scientist, I often have to enter symbols and greek letters. Under Mac OS X, entering symbols of any kind requires a tedious trip to the Character Palette, followed by searching for the your favorite “symbol-in-a-haystack.” Since TextExpander handles Unicode characters as well as plain text, I have created TextExpander tips for all my commonly used symbols.

For instance, to type the greek letter “alpha,” I type “åå” (option-a, option-a). TextExpander recognizes this unusual letter pair, and substitutes “α,” as nice as you please.

Keep up the good work!

Best wishes,
Clint

For us non-scientists, in case you are unfamiliar with alpha, pi, mu, etc., you can access them at Edit > Special Characters while adding a new snippet in TextExpander.

Remember, we are always looking for great user tips. Send them to me at jean@smileonmymac.com.