Getting spell check to ignore non-breaking double hyphens

[Larry]

Here's an interesting puzzle for experts. In my Word 97 documents that
use Courier (the font in which I do most of my drafts), instead of
double hyphens I use a non-breaking hyphen followed by a regular hyphen,
that is, in VBA language, Chr(30) followed by Chr(45). This keeps the
two hyphens together and keeps them both togehter with the word that
precedes them, so that they don't divide across the end of a line. I
have a macro that inserts this non-breaking double hyphen and use it all
the time.

Unfortunately, spell check stops at each non-breaking double hyphen. (I
get around this with a macro that converts the font to Arial and the
double hyphens to M dashes; then another macro that the document to its
original format when I'm done.) But I just noticed today that spell
check does NOT stop at regular double hyphens.

My question is, is there any way that I can get spell check to ignore my
special non-breaking double hyphens? I tried selecting a non-breaking
double hyphen and applying "no proofing" to it, but that didn't do the
trick.

Thanks
Larry

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I assume you can't just add it to the dictionary because presumably the text
selected as misspelled includes words on either side of the double hyphens?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Larry]

You're probably right. But Word itself excludes regular double hyphens
from the spell check, so I thought there might be some way to do the
same with non-breaking double hyphens.

I would send this to MS Wish, if they hadn't made it more difficult to
write to them.

Larry

I assume you can't just add it to the dictionary because presumably the text
selected as misspelled includes words on either side of the double

hyphens?

 

[Larry]

Correction. The new MS Wish (which is now called Product Feedback) is
not that bad. It just takes slightly long because you have to go the
web page and fill out a form.

Larry

 

[Mike Williams [MVP]]

You're probably right. But Word itself excludes regular double
hyphens from the spell check, so I thought there might be some way to
do the same with non-breaking double hyphens.

Each Office application breaks words slightly differently before sending
them to the spell-checker. In Word, the spell-checker will take words with a
single hyphen and look them up directly. If not found, then each side of the
hyphen is looked up independently.

I would send this to MS Wish, if they hadn't made it more difficult to
write to them.

Since Word 2003 has just been released, you will be waiting several years
before you see any result from this.

 

[Larry]

Since Word 2003 has just been released, you will be waiting several
years
before you see any result from this.

But didn't they say the same thing about Word 2002?