AutoFormat As You Type -- Dashes

[Uriel]

Word's help describes the "Hyphens with dash" option at
Tools:AutoCorrect:AutoFormat-As-You-Type as follows: "When you type a space
and one or two hyphens between text, Microsoft Word automatically inserts an
en dash ( - ). If you type two hyphens and do not include a space before the
hyphens, then an em dash ( - ) is created."

This is meant literally. You have to TYPE something after the hyphens. If
you paste, it won't work. Even if you type, the hyphens only get transformed
when something like a space, period, or Enter is typed. You can see this by
typing:

test--test

Of course this introduces the possibility of untransformed hyphens unless
you limit yourself to editing in only the ways the designers have imagined.

What if after the second "test" above you move the cursor elsewhere? What if
the second "test", followed by a period, was already there before you
entered the "test--" preceding it?

These problems make the feature unreliable for getting dashes as intended.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you run AutoFormat over text such as you describe, the dashes will be
converted.

 

[Uriel]

Anyone who sets himself a professional standard of presentation has to have
a standard procedure that's reliable. You can't make little mental notes to
yourself whenever you use dashes, telling yourself to run Autoformat later.
So in this case you'd have to always run Autoformat anytime you need the
document to be correct.

But if you have to do that, what's the use of Autoformat-as-you-type?

If MS offers a feature, it should work reliably.

If you run AutoFormat over text such as you describe, the dashes will be
converted.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

AutoFormat As You Type means just that, not AutoFormat As You Paste. If you
are pasting in text, you need to run AutoFormat. I don't see that as a very
difficult concept.

 

[Uriel]

AutoFormat As You Type means just that, not AutoFormat As You Paste.

This reminds me of a news report last May about how a lot of the
antiterrorism screening devices the government bought, at a cost of more
than $4.5 BILLION, were effectively junk and would have to be replaced.

Among the problems:

- radiation monitors, for ports and borders, that cannot differentiate
between radiation emitted by a nuclear bomb and naturally occurring
radiation from everyday material like cat litter or ceramic tile

- air-monitoring detectors, for major cities, that do not produce results
for up to 36 hours -- long after a biological attack would potentially
infect thousands of people

(See "U.S. to Spend Billions More to Alter Security Systems," New York
Times, May 8, 2005.)

I'm sure the vendors defended their stupid products the same way you're
defending MS: "Hey, the devices do exactly what we said they'd do."


AutoFormat As You Type means just that, not AutoFormat As You Paste. If you
are pasting in text, you need to run AutoFormat. I don't see that as a very
difficult concept.