4:44 - a breakthrough!

I am working through the syllabification of the College Church hymnal project. It goes like this:
With each hymn I carefully read through (yes, it is one more chance for all kinds of proof-reading) looking for multi-syllable words. Finding a word that needs to be divided for the notes of the melody, I click on the open Merriam-Webster website and type it in. The dictionary gives me the correct syllabification, which I put into the "Find and Replace" function in my Word document. In most cases I can hit "replace all" and move on. (I love the exceptions to that, except that it slows down the process a bit. For example, a word like heavenly which can be 2 or 3 syllables, sung.)

Today at 4:44pm, on page 51 of 440 in my compilation document, I came to the first hymn that was all entirely, properly hyphenated before I got there. The process works! I'm sure I will be making changes all the way through to the last hymn text - it's amazing how many different words are in our hymns! - but this is a psychological breakthrough. I feel that the job may actually get done.

Music notation is nearing the end, in the hands of master engraver Ed Childs. This week I will start sending him these prepared texts, which he can then drop into the music file, and voila! we will have a hymnal page. I'm eager to start seeing those drafts.