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Dash it All

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 11:28 pm
by Slava
The New York Times has a rather nice piece on the use of the dash. You can read it here: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... lobal-home

Re: Dash it All

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:58 pm
by Perry Lassiter
Enjoyed the article, though only his last examples illustrated my most frequent use of the dash--in place of a colon. Obviously, the ipad doesn't make the emdash conversion, and that's all right. Because I usually hit a space, an endash, and another space. Since the author repeatedly says there are no roles, i'm ok here. Indeed were there a strict emdash form, I would delight in breaking it!

Re: Dash it All

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 2:47 pm
by Philip Hudson
In Microsoft Word, I sometimes key in a dash - and it gives me a dash. At other times it gives me what seems to be an em dash and I do not want an em dash.

Even though Microsoft seems to be ahead of its competitor, with Microsoft Word one still has problems in just getting what one wants on a page. It assumes too much. Word’s ubiquitous grammar police fill my pages with little squiggly green lines. I have to bounce over to the Internet to get the spelling of the many word that Microsoft Word doesn’t have.

I am tormented by Microsoft, and I dare not go to a MAC. I bought an iPad, what a stupid name, and whoever invented it must have been from another planet because I can never get it to do what I want it to do. I have turned the iPad over to my wife who plays games on it. Do you suppose the Apple products are so squirrelly because of the stupid names they give them or vice-versa? If you like Apple products, just write me off as an intransigent, truculent, curmudgeonly engineer, long into his dotage.

Re: Dash it All

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2012 3:28 pm
by Perry Lassiter
I'm convinced ALL programs and apps should have more places to change defaults permanently. You can turn off spell check, grammar check, and autocorrect, but there are many other things you have to change every time or just deal with them. I do like this new spell thing on ipad where if you have a typo, you can put yr finger on the word and it usually suggests the correction to make it easier. I love the ipad and do most of my computer stuff on it, as I am now. I do my serious writing on the laptop because of the keyboard, and Word is better than an ipad sub.