Where do you draw the line? (No pun intended)
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited March 16, 2005).]
I am sure we should use "-" for 9-5, and for thirty-something. I didn't follow the thing about measurements. As in 9 p.m. or 55 m.p.h.? I don't know that there's anything special for that in MS format.
While we're splitting hairs . . . am I doing ellipsis right here? And is there a way to convince MS Word not to break the ". . ." when it appears at the end of a line?
Just use a hyphen for the en-dash. That's the printer's responsibility to change it to an en-dash, based on context. And use a regular space before PM also.
wbriggs:
1) yes, you're doing it right.
2) yes, there is.
[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited March 17, 2005).]
[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited March 17, 2005).]
But if you don't want to do that for fear of screwing up Word, the next best thing to do is use the edit/replace function to swap out the auto-corrects for manuscript friendly punctuation. Even better, record a macro of you doing this (once you've practiced it a few times) and have it ready to go when you need it, saving you a minute or two of doing this manually.
You could even record a macro that turns off (or back on) the entire auto-correct thing altogether, to use before you even start your manuscript, which would be my preference. No messin'.
The auto-correct stuff has no use for manuscripts, other than perhaps auto-correcting commonly misspelled words. A good solution is to create a unique MS Word Template that is solely for writing manuscripts, loading that before starting, and thus leaving the default "normal.dot" intact for everything else. You can customize your manuscript template to have special toolbars, commands, whatever... Definitely my preference, anyway.
Yet, auto-corrects (actually, auto-fills) do have some legitimacy. You can add auto-corrects to save you tons of time for words you repeat often, specifically characters' names -- and even more specifically, characters with hard to spell names. Type a few letters, word will auto-fill it in for you and if you press Enter at that moment -- whamo! -- insta-name inserted, perfect every time. (You could even make very short and easy macros assigned to shortcut keys to do this, too, skipping the whole auto-correct/auto-fill thing -- whatever suits you.)
Still, most people can't be bothered with this stuff, and fair enough. But if you ever need help with wrangling the most of MS Word, don't hesitate to email me. I'll do my best to explain it in the simplest terms possible.
[This message has been edited by HSO (edited March 17, 2005).]
After you type those three dots and before you hit the space bar, hit <ctrl><z>. It takes away the AutoFormat and changes the single ellipsis character into three dots.
This trick involves more typing, but I like using it specifically for the ellipsis. I've found I like the look of the single-char ellipsis for other documents I create using more decorative fonts.