posted
When is it appropriate to use an en dash? Is it only when you use it to denote 'to' as in 7–9pm? Also, what convention do you use to denote an en dash? Technically an en dash is half an em long and a hyphen is smaller than an en dash so how do you denote an en dash when a hyphen is denoted like this: - and an em dash is denoted like this: --? Also how do you signify the space between the number and the measurement ie the gap between the 9 and the PM or the 5 and the km? it is supposed to be less than an en but how do you do that? How much of the punctuation do we leave up to the compositors or editors? Or am I just splitting typographic hairs?
Where do you draw the line? (No pun intended)
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited March 16, 2005).]
posted
When I first started submitting, I used George Scithers' MS format as provided by the relatively new Asimov's. He said "--" is ok for dash and so's "---" but never "-"
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).]
posted
Oh, you wanted to know HOW to do it? Okay, you put <ctrl><shift><space> in for the interior spaces. That way it can break BEFORE the ellipsis starts, or AFTER it ends, but not in the middle. You can also add this to auto-correct, so that whenever you type it with regular spaces it automatically puts the non-breaking spaces in. (You would have to overwrite the "threedots" character, but you really don't want to use that anyway.)
[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited March 17, 2005).]
posted
I dislike many of the "auto-correct" things in MS Word. I've turned off the auto-ellipsis and the auto-em dash ones permanently, it's very easy to do, and easy enough to bring back if needed.
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).]
posted
My husband just taught me this trick. It's for those who aren't sure if they want to disable an AutoFormat feature in Word. I'll use the ellipsis as an example.
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.
posted
Thanks, y'all -- I've set the autocorrect to do . . . the way I wanted. About time. I'm sick of looking through MSs to see if the . . . broke in the middle! This should also stop -- from breaking (ctrl-shift-hyphen).
Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004
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