hyphen turns into en-dash

This comes up in linguistics a lot but probably doesn't affect anyone
else.

In Word2003, if you type a leading hyphen (for instance, "you can add -
er or -est to an adjective"), it turns into an en-dash when you reach
the end of the word (space or punctuation). (a) Why would anyone want
it to do this?? (b) How can I make it stop doing it? It's _not_ in
AutoCorrect As You Type, where I thought I found it once before.

(If anything, I'd like a hyphen in that position to automatically turn
into a Nonbreaking Hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-_), so that I don't get a hyphen
stranded at the end of a line and the suffix itself at the beginning
of the next line.)

On Dec 28, 4:28*pm, grammatim wrote:
This comes up in linguistics a lot but probably doesn't affect anyone
else.

In Word2003, if you type a leading hyphen (for instance, "you can add -
er or -est to an adjective"), it turns into an en-dash when you reach
the end of the word (space or punctuation). (a) Why would anyone want
it to do this?? (b) How can I make it stop doing it? It's _not_ in
AutoCorrect As You Type, where I thought I found it once before.

(If anything, I'd like a hyphen in that position to automatically turn
into a Nonbreaking Hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-_), so that I don't get a hyphen
stranded at the end of a line and the suffix itself at the beginning
of the next line.)

Incredibly, the very first thing I did after sending the above message
was to fix a place where the author had -a-, with an en-dash before
the comma. As I typed a hyphen over the en-dash, the leading hyphen
turned into an en-dash -- and a button appeared, and one of the
choices on it was "Don't change hyphen to dash"! And, sure enough,
there was another -a-, a few lines below, and as I fixed its en-dash,
its leading hyphen didn't change to an en-dash.

But is this permanent? Is it registered in normal.dot forever? If I
put " -" (space hyphen) in AutoCorrect As You Type to change to "
-" (space nonbreaking hyphen), will there be some sort of
irreconcilable conflict that will cause Word to crash and my document
to be lost forever?

If you look at the Undo list, you'll see this is an AutoFormat item. It's in
the AutoFormat As You Type dialog, and you can disable it completely when
you're typing linguistics docs, or, for isolated occurrences, just press
Ctrl+Z to cancel it when it occurs.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message
...
On Dec 28, 4:28 pm, grammatim wrote:
This comes up in linguistics a lot but probably doesn't affect anyone
else.

In Word2003, if you type a leading hyphen (for instance, "you can add -
er or -est to an adjective"), it turns into an en-dash when you reach
the end of the word (space or punctuation). (a) Why would anyone want
it to do this?? (b) How can I make it stop doing it? It's _not_ in
AutoCorrect As You Type, where I thought I found it once before.

(If anything, I'd like a hyphen in that position to automatically turn
into a Nonbreaking Hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-_), so that I don't get a hyphen
stranded at the end of a line and the suffix itself at the beginning
of the next line.)

Incredibly, the very first thing I did after sending the above message
was to fix a place where the author had -a-, with an en-dash before
the comma. As I typed a hyphen over the en-dash, the leading hyphen
turned into an en-dash -- and a button appeared, and one of the
choices on it was "Don't change hyphen to dash"! And, sure enough,
there was another -a-, a few lines below, and as I fixed its en-dash,
its leading hyphen didn't change to an en-dash.

But is this permanent? Is it registered in normal.dot forever? If I
put " -" (space hyphen) in AutoCorrect As You Type to change to "
-" (space nonbreaking hyphen), will there be some sort of
irreconcilable conflict that will cause Word to crash and my document
to be lost forever?

Are you referring to "Hyphens (--) with dash (em-dash)"? Indeed I find
that it's now unchecked, but that's not what I was typing, nor what I
was getting! (I don't need that anyway, because I always type my en-
and em-dashes with Ctrl-Minus and Ctrl-Alt-Minus.)

I must say, I have no idea what "Long vowel sounds with dash" means.

Ctrl-Z isn't practical because (first) one would have to notice that
the change had happened and (second) one would have to back up lots of
letters to get back to where it did the automatic change.

Thank you; I'll feel comfortable putting the nonbreaking hyphen into
AutoCorrect As You Type.

On Dec 28, 5:13*pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
If you look at the Undo list, you'll see this is an AutoFormat item. It's in
the AutoFormat As You Type dialog, and you can disable it completely when
you're typing linguistics docs, or, for isolated occurrences, just press
Ctrl+Z to cancel it when it occurs.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message

...
On Dec 28, 4:28 pm, grammatim wrote:

This comes up in linguistics a lot but probably doesn't affect anyone
else.

In Word2003, if you type a leading hyphen (for instance, "you can add -
er or -est to an adjective"), it turns into an en-dash when you reach
the end of the word (space or punctuation). (a) Why would anyone want
it to do this?? (b) How can I make it stop doing it? It's _not_ in
AutoCorrect As You Type, where I thought I found it once before.

(If anything, I'd like a hyphen in that position to automatically turn
into a Nonbreaking Hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-_), so that I don't get a hyphen
stranded at the end of a line and the suffix itself at the beginning
of the next line.)

Incredibly, the very first thing I did after sending the above message
was to fix a place where the author had -a-, with an en-dash before
the comma. As I typed a hyphen over the en-dash, the leading hyphen
turned into an en-dash -- and a button appeared, and one of the
choices on it was "Don't change hyphen to dash"! And, sure enough,
there was another -a-, a few lines below, and as I fixed its en-dash,
its leading hyphen didn't change to an en-dash.

But is this permanent? Is it registered in normal.dot forever? If I
put " -" (space hyphen) in AutoCorrect As You Type to change to "
-" (space nonbreaking hyphen), will there be some sort of
irreconcilable conflict that will cause Word to crash and my document
to be lost forever?

Didn't work -- I can't get nonbreaking hyphen into the AutoCorrect
page: not by typing Ctrl-Shift-_, nor by Pasting it from the
clipboard, nor by typing ^~, its wildcard symbol.

On Dec 28, 6:44*pm, grammatim wrote:
Are you referring to "Hyphens (--) with dash (em-dash)"? Indeed I find
that it's now unchecked, but that's not what I was typing, nor what I
was getting! (I don't need that anyway, because I always type my en-
and em-dashes with Ctrl-Minus and Ctrl-Alt-Minus.)

I must say, I have no idea what "Long vowel sounds with dash" means.

Ctrl-Z isn't practical because (first) one would have to notice that
the change had happened and (second) one would have to back up lots of
letters to get back to where it did the automatic change.

Thank you; I'll feel comfortable putting the nonbreaking hyphen into
AutoCorrect As You Type.

On Dec 28, 5:13*pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:



If you look at the Undo list, you'll see this is an AutoFormat item. It's in
the AutoFormat As You Type dialog, and you can disable it completely when
you're typing linguistics docs, or, for isolated occurrences, just press
Ctrl+Z to cancel it when it occurs.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message

...
On Dec 28, 4:28 pm, grammatim wrote:

This comes up in linguistics a lot but probably doesn't affect anyone
else.

In Word2003, if you type a leading hyphen (for instance, "you can add -
er or -est to an adjective"), it turns into an en-dash when you reach
the end of the word (space or punctuation). (a) Why would anyone want
it to do this?? (b) How can I make it stop doing it? It's _not_ in
AutoCorrect As You Type, where I thought I found it once before.

(If anything, I'd like a hyphen in that position to automatically turn
into a Nonbreaking Hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-_), so that I don't get a hyphen
stranded at the end of a line and the suffix itself at the beginning
of the next line.)

Incredibly, the very first thing I did after sending the above message
was to fix a place where the author had -a-, with an en-dash before
the comma. As I typed a hyphen over the en-dash, the leading hyphen
turned into an en-dash -- and a button appeared, and one of the
choices on it was "Don't change hyphen to dash"! And, sure enough,
there was another -a-, a few lines below, and as I fixed its en-dash,
its leading hyphen didn't change to an en-dash.

But is this permanent? Is it registered in normal.dot forever? If I
put " -" (space hyphen) in AutoCorrect As You Type to change to "
-" (space nonbreaking hyphen), will there be some sort of
irreconcilable conflict that will cause Word to crash and my document
to be lost forever?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Yes, that's the one. The label is a bit of an abbreviation. What it actually
does is this:

* Converts two or three hyphens not preceded or followed by spaces to an em
dash.

* Converts one or two hyphens preceded and followed by spaces to an en dash.

* Various other conversions depending on spaces before/after that I don't
have the patience to test and elaborate on at the moment, but what you're
seeing is the result of one of them.

I also have shortcuts for en and em dashes, so I probably wouldn't miss this
feature if it were turned off, though I do leave it on (it's especially
handy in AutoFormat--as opposed to AutoFormat As You Type--for formatting
existing text).

You can save words joined by nonbreaking spaces or hyphens as *formatted*
AutoCorrect entries; I don't know whether you can save the hyphen alone that
way or not.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message
...
Are you referring to "Hyphens (--) with dash (em-dash)"? Indeed I find
that it's now unchecked, but that's not what I was typing, nor what I
was getting! (I don't need that anyway, because I always type my en-
and em-dashes with Ctrl-Minus and Ctrl-Alt-Minus.)

I must say, I have no idea what "Long vowel sounds with dash" means.

Ctrl-Z isn't practical because (first) one would have to notice that
the change had happened and (second) one would have to back up lots of
letters to get back to where it did the automatic change.

Thank you; I'll feel comfortable putting the nonbreaking hyphen into
AutoCorrect As You Type.

On Dec 28, 5:13 pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
If you look at the Undo list, you'll see this is an AutoFormat item. It's
in
the AutoFormat As You Type dialog, and you can disable it completely when
you're typing linguistics docs, or, for isolated occurrences, just press
Ctrl+Z to cancel it when it occurs.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message

...
On Dec 28, 4:28 pm, grammatim wrote:

This comes up in linguistics a lot but probably doesn't affect anyone
else.

In Word2003, if you type a leading hyphen (for instance, "you can add -
er or -est to an adjective"), it turns into an en-dash when you reach
the end of the word (space or punctuation). (a) Why would anyone want
it to do this?? (b) How can I make it stop doing it? It's _not_ in
AutoCorrect As You Type, where I thought I found it once before.

(If anything, I'd like a hyphen in that position to automatically turn
into a Nonbreaking Hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-_), so that I don't get a hyphen
stranded at the end of a line and the suffix itself at the beginning
of the next line.)

Incredibly, the very first thing I did after sending the above message
was to fix a place where the author had -a-, with an en-dash before
the comma. As I typed a hyphen over the en-dash, the leading hyphen
turned into an en-dash -- and a button appeared, and one of the
choices on it was "Don't change hyphen to dash"! And, sure enough,
there was another -a-, a few lines below, and as I fixed its en-dash,
its leading hyphen didn't change to an en-dash.

But is this permanent? Is it registered in normal.dot forever? If I
put " -" (space hyphen) in AutoCorrect As You Type to change to "
-" (space nonbreaking hyphen), will there be some sort of
irreconcilable conflict that will cause Word to crash and my document
to be lost forever?

Ok, I'll look for "formatted AutoCorrect entries" -- but what is "Long
vowel sounds with dash"?

On Dec 28, 7:01*pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
Yes, that's the one. The label is a bit of an abbreviation. What it actually
does is this:

* Converts two or three hyphens not preceded or followed by spaces to an em
dash.

* Converts one or two hyphens preceded and followed by spaces to an en dash.

* Various other conversions depending on spaces before/after that I don't
have the patience to test and elaborate on at the moment, but what you're
seeing is the result of one of them.

I also have shortcuts for en and em dashes, so I probably wouldn't miss this
feature if it were turned off, though I do leave it on (it's especially
handy in AutoFormat--as opposed to AutoFormat As You Type--for formatting
existing text).

You can save words joined by nonbreaking spaces or hyphens as *formatted*
AutoCorrect entries; I don't know whether you can save the hyphen alone that
way or not.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message

...
Are you referring to "Hyphens (--) with dash (em-dash)"? Indeed I find
that it's now unchecked, but that's not what I was typing, nor what I
was getting! (I don't need that anyway, because I always type my en-
and em-dashes with Ctrl-Minus and Ctrl-Alt-Minus.)

I must say, I have no idea what "Long vowel sounds with dash" means.

Ctrl-Z isn't practical because (first) one would have to notice that
the change had happened and (second) one would have to back up lots of
letters to get back to where it did the automatic change.

Thank you; I'll feel comfortable putting the nonbreaking hyphen into
AutoCorrect As You Type.

On Dec 28, 5:13 pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:



If you look at the Undo list, you'll see this is an AutoFormat item. It's
in
the AutoFormat As You Type dialog, and you can disable it completely when
you're typing linguistics docs, or, for isolated occurrences, just press
Ctrl+Z to cancel it when it occurs.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message

...
On Dec 28, 4:28 pm, grammatim wrote:

This comes up in linguistics a lot but probably doesn't affect anyone
else.

In Word2003, if you type a leading hyphen (for instance, "you can add -
er or -est to an adjective"), it turns into an en-dash when you reach
the end of the word (space or punctuation). (a) Why would anyone want
it to do this?? (b) How can I make it stop doing it? It's _not_ in
AutoCorrect As You Type, where I thought I found it once before.

(If anything, I'd like a hyphen in that position to automatically turn
into a Nonbreaking Hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-_), so that I don't get a hyphen
stranded at the end of a line and the suffix itself at the beginning
of the next line.)

Incredibly, the very first thing I did after sending the above message
was to fix a place where the author had -a-, with an en-dash before
the comma. As I typed a hyphen over the en-dash, the leading hyphen
turned into an en-dash -- and a button appeared, and one of the
choices on it was "Don't change hyphen to dash"! And, sure enough,
there was another -a-, a few lines below, and as I fixed its en-dash,
its leading hyphen didn't change to an en-dash.

But is this permanent? Is it registered in normal.dot forever? If I
put " -" (space hyphen) in AutoCorrect As You Type to change to "
-" (space nonbreaking hyphen), will there be some sort of
irreconcilable conflict that will cause Word to crash and my document
to be lost forever?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Where are you seeing that? It sounds like a description of vowels with a
macron over them (Unicode characters found in the Latin Extended-A character
subset), but I've never seen this label before. Is it on the AutoCorrect
Options button? I've just enabled that button, but I'm not seeing that on
the menu when the dash fires.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message
...
Ok, I'll look for "formatted AutoCorrect entries" -- but what is "Long
vowel sounds with dash"?

On Dec 28, 7:01 pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
Yes, that's the one. The label is a bit of an abbreviation. What it
actually
does is this:

* Converts two or three hyphens not preceded or followed by spaces to an
em
dash.

* Converts one or two hyphens preceded and followed by spaces to an en
dash.

* Various other conversions depending on spaces before/after that I don't
have the patience to test and elaborate on at the moment, but what you're
seeing is the result of one of them.

I also have shortcuts for en and em dashes, so I probably wouldn't miss
this
feature if it were turned off, though I do leave it on (it's especially
handy in AutoFormat--as opposed to AutoFormat As You Type--for formatting
existing text).

You can save words joined by nonbreaking spaces or hyphens as *formatted*
AutoCorrect entries; I don't know whether you can save the hyphen alone
that
way or not.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message

...
Are you referring to "Hyphens (--) with dash (em-dash)"? Indeed I find
that it's now unchecked, but that's not what I was typing, nor what I
was getting! (I don't need that anyway, because I always type my en-
and em-dashes with Ctrl-Minus and Ctrl-Alt-Minus.)

I must say, I have no idea what "Long vowel sounds with dash" means.

Ctrl-Z isn't practical because (first) one would have to notice that
the change had happened and (second) one would have to back up lots of
letters to get back to where it did the automatic change.

Thank you; I'll feel comfortable putting the nonbreaking hyphen into
AutoCorrect As You Type.

On Dec 28, 5:13 pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:



If you look at the Undo list, you'll see this is an AutoFormat item.
It's
in
the AutoFormat As You Type dialog, and you can disable it completely
when
you're typing linguistics docs, or, for isolated occurrences, just press
Ctrl+Z to cancel it when it occurs.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message

...
On Dec 28, 4:28 pm, grammatim wrote:

This comes up in linguistics a lot but probably doesn't affect anyone
else.

In Word2003, if you type a leading hyphen (for instance, "you can
add -
er or -est to an adjective"), it turns into an en-dash when you reach
the end of the word (space or punctuation). (a) Why would anyone want
it to do this?? (b) How can I make it stop doing it? It's _not_ in
AutoCorrect As You Type, where I thought I found it once before.

(If anything, I'd like a hyphen in that position to automatically turn
into a Nonbreaking Hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-_), so that I don't get a hyphen
stranded at the end of a line and the suffix itself at the beginning
of the next line.)

Incredibly, the very first thing I did after sending the above message
was to fix a place where the author had -a-, with an en-dash before
the comma. As I typed a hyphen over the en-dash, the leading hyphen
turned into an en-dash -- and a button appeared, and one of the
choices on it was "Don't change hyphen to dash"! And, sure enough,
there was another -a-, a few lines below, and as I fixed its en-dash,
its leading hyphen didn't change to an en-dash.

But is this permanent? Is it registered in normal.dot forever? If I
put " -" (space hyphen) in AutoCorrect As You Type to change to "
-" (space nonbreaking hyphen), will there be some sort of
irreconcilable conflict that will cause Word to crash and my document
to be lost forever?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in
:

If you look at the Undo list, you'll see this is an AutoFormat item.
It's in the AutoFormat As You Type dialog, and you can disable it
completely when you're typing linguistics docs, or, for isolated
occurrences, just press Ctrl+Z to cancel it when it occurs.


Suzanne,
While your here. . .

I archive/didgitze many documents/articles. Initially this is all done
through WordPad and saved as RTF files.

Later when opening these files (clicking) the file association by
default is Word, which I'm not looking to change or even address.

Rather, my problem is later upon opening these files to create web pages.
The text is copied and pasted from withim Word to either Notepad or an
HTML tool.
The problem that occurrs is that all the standard dashes/hyphens are
turned in to question marks (requiring additional editing).
The em-dashes which are used frequently in these materials are turned
into dashes.

Might you suggest a possible solution that would retain the original
punctuation upon conversion?

Thanks in advance.

On the AutoFormat panel (the one we've been talking about), directly
below the line for "Hyphens (-) with dash (-)." I even tried "Online
Help" (and found where you'd quoted the description of the latter
from), and there's nothing there.

(Are there subversions of Word2003 that I could identify somehow?)

I don't know what the AutoCorrect Options button does (or where it
would appear if I enabled it).

I made my own shortcut keys for macron-letters (since I need them all
the time) as well as most of the other accented letters. (Though I
haven't gotten around to the Vietnamese set yet.)

On Dec 28, 11:41*pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
Where are you seeing that? It sounds like a description of vowels with a
macron over them (Unicode characters found in the Latin Extended-A character
subset), but I've never seen this label before. Is it on the AutoCorrect
Options button? I've just enabled that button, but I'm not seeing that on
the menu when the dash fires.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message

...
Ok, I'll look for "formatted AutoCorrect entries" -- but what is "Long
vowel sounds with dash"?

On Dec 28, 7:01 pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:



Yes, that's the one. The label is a bit of an abbreviation. What it
actually
does is this:

* Converts two or three hyphens not preceded or followed by spaces to an
em
dash.

* Converts one or two hyphens preceded and followed by spaces to an en
dash.

* Various other conversions depending on spaces before/after that I don't
have the patience to test and elaborate on at the moment, but what you're
seeing is the result of one of them.

I also have shortcuts for en and em dashes, so I probably wouldn't miss
this
feature if it were turned off, though I do leave it on (it's especially
handy in AutoFormat--as opposed to AutoFormat As You Type--for formatting
existing text).

You can save words joined by nonbreaking spaces or hyphens as *formatted*
AutoCorrect entries; I don't know whether you can save the hyphen alone
that
way or not.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message

...
Are you referring to "Hyphens (--) with dash (em-dash)"? Indeed I find
that it's now unchecked, but that's not what I was typing, nor what I
was getting! (I don't need that anyway, because I always type my en-
and em-dashes with Ctrl-Minus and Ctrl-Alt-Minus.)

I must say, I have no idea what "Long vowel sounds with dash" means.

Ctrl-Z isn't practical because (first) one would have to notice that
the change had happened and (second) one would have to back up lots of
letters to get back to where it did the automatic change.

Thank you; I'll feel comfortable putting the nonbreaking hyphen into
AutoCorrect As You Type.

On Dec 28, 5:13 pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

If you look at the Undo list, you'll see this is an AutoFormat item.
It's
in
the AutoFormat As You Type dialog, and you can disable it completely
when
you're typing linguistics docs, or, for isolated occurrences, just press
Ctrl+Z to cancel it when it occurs.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

"grammatim" wrote in message

....
On Dec 28, 4:28 pm, grammatim wrote:

This comes up in linguistics a lot but probably doesn't affect anyone
else.

In Word2003, if you type a leading hyphen (for instance, "you can
add -
er or -est to an adjective"), it turns into an en-dash when you reach
the end of the word (space or punctuation). (a) Why would anyone want
it to do this?? (b) How can I make it stop doing it? It's _not_ in
AutoCorrect As You Type, where I thought I found it once before.

(If anything, I'd like a hyphen in that position to automatically turn
into a Nonbreaking Hyphen (Ctrl-Shift-_), so that I don't get a hyphen
stranded at the end of a line and the suffix itself at the beginning
of the next line.)

Incredibly, the very first thing I did after sending the above message
was to fix a place where the author had -a-, with an en-dash before
the comma. As I typed a hyphen over the en-dash, the leading hyphen
turned into an en-dash -- and a button appeared, and one of the
choices on it was "Don't change hyphen to dash"! And, sure enough,
there was another -a-, a few lines below, and as I fixed its en-dash,
its leading hyphen didn't change to an en-dash.

But is this permanent? Is it registered in normal.dot forever? If I
put " -" (space hyphen) in AutoCorrect As You Type to change to "
-" (space nonbreaking hyphen), will there be some sort of
irreconcilable conflict that will cause Word to crash and my document
to be lost forever?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -