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Author Topic: Dashes, hypens, and other lines  (Read 5801 times)

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Offline Tante Shvester

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Dashes, hypens, and other lines
« Reply #25 on: July 09, 2008, 08:25:54 AM »
Grave mark?

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Offline goofy

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« Reply #26 on: July 09, 2008, 09:01:50 AM »
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I wonder why nobody took the opportunity to change the keyboard when personal computers were invented. Why can't we ditch a few of the useless symbols and replace them with characters that people actually need?
Well, with computers, the symbols printed on the keys don't really matter since you can use whatever keyboard layouts you like.
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Offline rivka

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« Reply #27 on: July 09, 2008, 11:33:28 AM »
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Same with the tilde.
But that's actually useful! It means "approximately".
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Offline Porter

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« Reply #28 on: July 09, 2008, 11:37:54 AM »
In my preferred text editor, I use the tilde to switch toggle upper/lower case.
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Offline The Genuine

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« Reply #29 on: July 09, 2008, 11:55:47 AM »
Why not use Caps Lock?
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Offline Porter

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« Reply #30 on: July 09, 2008, 11:56:56 AM »
It is used to toggle upper/lower case of text that already exists.
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Offline Farmgirl

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« Reply #31 on: July 09, 2008, 01:49:55 PM »
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Farmgirl, I guess this is the time to bring it up:  shouldn't that be an em dash in your sig?

Also, where's that quote from?  I really like that.  Really sounds like of nifty for any profession.  (Except maybe garbage man.)
You know - probably.  I will see if I can fix that.
(I just made the dash with the keystroke ALT+0151 - that's what I've always used for em dash. Is that not correct?)

And the quote -- my son (the farmer) said it.  Although he's probably not the first person to say it, or at least think it.
« Last Edit: July 09, 2008, 01:51:52 PM by Farmgirl »
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Offline The Genuine

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« Reply #32 on: July 14, 2008, 10:57:19 AM »
Is there such thing as a non-breaking hyphen like there is a non-breaking space?

A corporate defendant in a case has a name like X-Y-Z and when that name appears at the end of a line, Word breaks it up across lines, but since's it's a name it should stay whole.
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Offline Jonathon

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« Reply #33 on: July 14, 2008, 11:54:42 AM »
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Many of those symbols are used in programming languages or similar nerdy applications.

I regularly use all of of the symbols on my keyboard except for the grave mark.  That one we can kill.
I may be mistaken about this, but I believed they're used because they're available; they're not on the keyboard because they're used in those applications. But that's a good point—there are several symbols that aren't used much in text, but if we got rid of them now, it'd inconvenience a lot of people.
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Offline Jonathon

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« Reply #34 on: July 14, 2008, 11:58:04 AM »
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Is there such thing as a non-breaking hyphen like there is a non-breaking space?

A corporate defendant in a case has a name like X-Y-Z and when that name appears at the end of a line, Word breaks it up across lines, but since's it's a name it should stay whole.
Yes, there is such a thing. It looks like the command to insert a nonbreaking hyphen in Word (at least in 2007) is Ctrl+Shift+_.
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Offline The Genuine

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« Reply #35 on: July 14, 2008, 12:22:22 PM »
Many thanks!
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Offline The Genuine

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« Reply #36 on: July 15, 2008, 06:54:09 PM »
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Both long- and short- term.
Did I do that right on Sake's dating thread?


I feel like

Quote
Both long- and short-term.
would have unduly emphasized the "short" at the expense of the "long."

Or should I have dropped the hyphens altogether?
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Offline Jonathon

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« Reply #37 on: July 15, 2008, 08:04:12 PM »
The latter is right. If you use a hyphen between two words, there should be no space.
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Offline The Genuine

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« Reply #38 on: July 15, 2008, 08:36:01 PM »
Uncharacteristic as it may be, I might continue to defy you on that one.
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Offline Jonathon

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« Reply #39 on: July 15, 2008, 08:37:11 PM »
Be my guest. You're welcome to look as silly as you like. ;)  
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