smart quotes and word wrap driving me nuts!

[Kenneth Simon]

Okay, Word is making me crazy today. I'm writing a paragraph of
dialogue, and at the end, the speaker is interrupted.

Conventionally, this is represented by a dash and then an end quote.

For example:

"Let me finish what I'm trying to - "
"Just be quiet and listen!"

The real dialogue, however, is lengthier, and the dash happens to come
at the end of the page width. Word does a couple of crazy things in
this case. First of all, it splits the dash and the end quote. For
example:

"Let me finish what I'm trying to -
"
"Just be quiet and listen!"

I could conceivably avoid this by using a different font size or page
width. But is there a way to stop Word from putting an end quote by
itself on a separate line?

There's another problem, too. The dash (long or short dash, doesn't
matter) fools Word somehow, and its smart quotes feature makes the end
quote face the wrong way!

Is this an inveitability of smart quotes (in which case I shall dub it
dumb quotes) or is there some kind of trick I can use to fool Word into
doing this right? Is there a way to *force* Word to format a double
quote as a beginning or end quote? If not -- I'll turn off the smart
quotes feature.

Please don't reply by email -- to avoid spam, the address in the header
does not accept incoming messages.

Thanks,
Ken

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

The smart quotes are dumb, so face the wrong way. I've not seen a fix for
that, exactly. You can avoid it by typing smart quotes directly yourself
when necessary--use the bracket [ ] keys with option as a modifier, and
sometimes shift-option, and that will get you all the variations. (I'm glad
you asked this, I've been using the "randomly enter spaces and retype, then
delete spaces until I get the right quotation mark" system, which is not
very efficient).

I don't know about the wrap problem. Word breaks words after em dashes
(which it should), but is not smart enough to know the exceptions. A
zero-width space exists in WinWord, and I think now in Word 2004 (unicode)
but I don't know about a zero-width nonbreaking space. Let me investigate
that one....

DM

 

[CyberTaz]

Hey Ken-

Through Insert>Symbol>Special Characters you can insert a No-Width Non
Break, which may be what you need. It has no keystroke equivalent, but
you can assign one while you're there. Might be some other answers for
you too!

HTH |:>)

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

CyberTaz, how do you make the nonbreaking space no-width? I don't see that
exact option in that dialog, am I just missing it?

Daiya

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Kenneth,

A solution is to connect the last word and the dash and the closing
quotation mark with non-breaking spaces so that if the closing quote or dash
would have been taken over to the next line as you describe, the last word
will be taken with them.

To make the closing quotation mark a "99" rather than a "66" type of
character, you need to type in a key combination as Daiya suggested. That's
a pain, of course.

To make it really easy, do this:

1. Type an em dash (Shift-Option-hyphen), followed by a non-breaking space
(Option-spacebar), followed by a closing double quote (Shift-Option-[).

2. Drag from the em dash through the double quote.

3. Tools menu -> AutoCorrect. You will see that your selection is already
in the right-hand filed.

4. In the left-hand field, type in some letters that you won't be typing in
for any other purpose on their own -- maybe something like "ide", standing
for interrupted dialogue ending.

5. Click Add, click OK.

6. When typing the narrative, e.g. "Let me finish what I'm trying to", you
would type the following (in this example, < and > precede and follow what
you type -- you don't type those characters):

Let me finish what I'm trying to<Option-Spacebar>ide<Return key>

Voila!

For more on using AutoCorrect, do a "Find" for this term in the notes on the
way I use Word for the Mac, titled "Bend Word to Your Will", which are
available as a free download from the Word MVPs' website
(http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Bend/BendWord.htm).


Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is at least 5 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
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[Klaus Linke]

Probably Option+FEFF, if you have Unicode Hex input activated.
But it doesn't work... at least not for preventing a line break after the n-dash.

I'm not 100% sure it's *supposed* to keep characters together, and there has also been a lot of confusion of the "zero width space" and "zero width no-break space" with U+200C and 200D ("zero width non-joiner" and "zero width joiner"), which are supposed to affect the prevention/creation of ligatures.

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Yes, I finally got there after much research, and then realized it didn't
work. Suzanne B suggested combining and condensing nonbreaking hyphens to
mimic an em dash. (available through Insert | Symbol, Special Characters)

Ken, I think that would be your only option. Set it up and then as Clive
said, copy it into AutoCorrect and create an entry for ease of use.

Ken, you are aware that although you typed a hyphen in your original post,
that ought properly to be an em dash, right?

Thanks Klaus--I'm already exhausted by my venture into Unicode, I can't even
think about anything to do with ligatures. But I tried the joiner too
and it doesn't work either. Word learned it was supposed to break after an
em dash no matter what.

Daiya

 

[Clive Huggan]

Daiya,

I had assumed that Ken had keyed spaces in his post to duplicate exactly
what he did in his scripts, hence my particular solution. I noted the
spaces around the dash and assumed that he followed the more common (but
certainly nowhere near exclusive) typographic practice outside the US of
using spaces either side of em dashes.

Maybe we will find out ...

Cheers
Clive
========

 

[CyberTaz]

Hey Daiya-

My apologies to both Ken & you...Double checked in '04 & you're absolutely
right - it isn't available in Mac version. I was referencing from pc side &
never guessed that it wasn't here too. The Windows newsgroup is buzzing over
the reliability of it anyway, so maybe we're better off.

I was thinking I had used it on the Mac before, but the more I think about
it, it was probably PageMaker or QuarkXpress where I added those
embellishments.

I should know better than to assume that even the smallest point might not
differ between Win & Mac versions |:>(

CyberTaz, how do you make the nonbreaking space no-width? I don't see that
exact option in that dialog, am I just missing it?

Daiya

-- (e-mail address removed)

 

[Kenneth Simon]

Thank you all! Your replies helped me learn the proper use of hyphens,
en dashes and em dashes. The double-hyphen surrounded by spaces was
what I typed out of convenience, and Word typically autocorrected it to
an em dash, still surrounded by spaces.

In any case, I'm going to switch to the US convention of an em dash
with no spaces.

As for the incorrect smart quotes and bad word wrap, inserting an em
dash rather than a double-hyphen didn't help in this case. I manually
fixed the end quote. As for the word wrap, I inserted an en dash
instead of an em dash. It was shorter by a little bit... just enough to
keep everything on the same line.

Good enough for me in this case!

Thanks again everyone. I'm impressed with the level of knowledge and
willingness to help. Years ago I taught classes on how to use MS Word
and I only wish I had been able to offer assistance like this.

Ken

The smart quotes are dumb, so face the wrong way. I've not seen a fix for
that, exactly. You can avoid it by typing smart quotes directly yourself
when necessary--use the bracket [ ] keys with option as a modifier, and
sometimes shift-option, and that will get you all the variations. (I'm glad
you asked this, I've been using the "randomly enter spaces and retype, then
delete spaces until I get the right quotation mark" system, which is not
very efficient).

I don't know about the wrap problem. Word breaks words after em dashes
(which it should), but is not smart enough to know the exceptions. A
zero-width space exists in WinWord, and I think now in Word 2004 (unicode)
but I don't know about a zero-width nonbreaking space. Let me investigate
that one....

DM

Okay, Word is making me crazy today. I'm writing a paragraph of
dialogue, and at the end, the speaker is interrupted.

Conventionally, this is represented by a dash and then an end quote.

For example:

"Let me finish what I'm trying to - "
"Just be quiet and listen!"

The real dialogue, however, is lengthier, and the dash happens to come
at the end of the page width. Word does a couple of crazy things in
this case. First of all, it splits the dash and the end quote. For
example:

"Let me finish what I'm trying to -
"
"Just be quiet and listen!"

I could conceivably avoid this by using a different font size or page
width. But is there a way to stop Word from putting an end quote by
itself on a separate line?

There's another problem, too. The dash (long or short dash, doesn't
matter) fools Word somehow, and its smart quotes feature makes the end
quote face the wrong way!

Is this an inveitability of smart quotes (in which case I shall dub it
dumb quotes) or is there some kind of trick I can use to fool Word into
doing this right? Is there a way to *force* Word to format a double
quote as a beginning or end quote? If not -- I'll turn off the smart
quotes feature.

Please don't reply by email -- to avoid spam, the address in the header
does not accept incoming messages.

Thanks,
Ken