Em dash

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rpcameron
Knows everything, can prove it
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Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2005 12:48 am
Location: IE, CA, USA

Post by rpcameron »

alexwein wrote:I'm not suggesting that double hyphen/em dashes are used uniformly all over the world or in uniform ways. I'm merely saying that this is something other programs have in this particular fashion (double hyphen to em dash), programs I use quite often, and I'd love it if Mellel had it.
I'm not fully opposed to this idea, as long as it's an option that can be disabled. Also, if it's going to be implemented, I'm going to recommend doing it the TeX way: 1 hyphen = hyphen; 2 hyphens = en dash; 3 hyphens = em dash. This way it would make it easier to insert en dashes as well, and does not pay any special attention to one locale over another.
— Robert Cameron
alexwein
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Joined: Tue Oct 25, 2005 9:31 pm
Location: Portland, Oregon, USA

Post by alexwein »

rpcameron wrote:I'm not fully opposed to this idea, as long as it's an option that can be disabled. Also, if it's going to be implemented, I'm going to recommend doing it the TeX way: 1 hyphen = hyphen; 2 hyphens = en dash; 3 hyphens = em dash. This way it would make it easier to insert en dashes as well, and does not pay any special attention to one locale over another.
Sounds good. I'll, of course, recommend two dashes make an em dash. :) But either way it's a plus, and, as you point out, there are more options for folks in different regions your way.
tkt26
Got the styles thing figured out
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Joined: Fri May 09, 2008 4:47 pm

Re: Em dash and ellipsis

Post by tkt26 »

Just a quick addendum: the ellipsis on a US keyboard with Leopard is alt+: (alt and the colon button), producing "…" but without the quote marks (obviously). Thanks for the post, though; I had no idea that a keyboard shortcut existed for the ellipsis till seeing this and experimenting!

You could set up a Text Expander program to substitute the em-dash for two dashes, though this would be system wide and might cause some errors in other programs. You could use TextExpander (a great shareware program) or app4mac's RapidoWrite program (freeware). Then create a snippet for replacing two dashes with an em-dash.

One of my reasons to switch to Mellel, BTW, is I had snippets in TextExpander (TE) I was used to, and Word 08 and its auto-complete and spellchecks and whatnot seemed to mess with TE so that expansions were slow or buggy. With Mellel (and Nisus Writer Pro) I can expand away as I clack clack clack the keyboard.

Thanks
tkt
shades
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Re: Em dash and ellipsis

Post by shades »

tkt26 wrote:Just a quick addendum: the ellipsis on a US keyboard with Leopard is alt+: (alt and the colon button), producing "…" but without the quote marks (obviously). Thanks for the post, though; I had no idea that a keyboard shortcut existed for the ellipsis till seeing this and experimenting!
Technically, the combination for the ellipsis is: OPTION + ; (semi-colon, not colon). If it were colon, then the key combination would have to include the SHIFT key.
Rich
old, slow, and confused...but at least I’m inconsistent!

iMac 27" (10. 13. 8 ) and MBP 13" Retina (10. 13. 8 )
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