h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Another journal already! If anyone has read my first journal, they may have noticed a liberal smattering of mysterious groups of characters where a single, different character would seem to make more sense. This is the group I'm referring to: – . This is not some kind of Masonic code or piece of esoterica aimed at initiates of the church of mumbo jumbo. It's what happens if you produce your journal in Word 2000 and make use of the "dash", which Word then (unhelpfully) changes to an em-dash if there is a space behind and in front of it. It's only supposed to change 2 dashes to an em-dash and leave a single dash as an en-dash but perhaps an en-dash would also be displayed as some bunch of characters that would look meaningless in the context of your journal. I just don't know.

In any case if you produce your journals in Word and you want to avoid making the same mistake that I made then, from the "Tools" menu in Word select AutoCorrect, click on the "AutoFormat As You Type" tab and uncheck the "Replace as you type" Symbol characters (--) with symbols (--) (the second bracketed symbol is a long unbroken dash, or "em-dash",by the way but I can't show that as it would be displayed as a bunch of characters when changed to plain text format). Then Microsoft will stop interfering with your dashes.

I'm a bit fed with myself for having made this mistake. If I'd clicked the "Preview" button before posting the journal permanently, I would have spotted the problem. Once a journal is posted, it seems, there's no going back, so all the gobbledegook in my very first journal will be blowing raspberries at me every time I look at my home page for as long as I live, or continue to access the page, or until H2G2 change the system so I can go and correct it. Ahhhhhh well, never mind.

Ah, I wondered about that.

I had thought about using Word but never got round to trying it. I've only used Outlook Express for offline composition mainly because it was loaded at the time and I was too idle to load anything else. Seems to work fine. I wonder about Wordpad or Notepad, they seem to be pretty basic.

Hello Plaguesville

I've got over my initial vexation with the mumbo jumbo problem. I haven't done any more journals using Word yet but I think I might try saving them in text format next time. It might make a difference. I think apostrophies also get mangled if you use Word. It depends on the settings though. If you leave the setting in microsoft's default state, all sorts of rubbish can be generated. The advantage of using a word processor is mainly the spell checker I think. Mine isn't too bad most of the time but those journals are here to stay and embarrass (not sure if embarrass is the right spelling - how can I check in this thing) you for the foreseeable (?spelling)future.

Hi,

Everything is a trade off.
I tire of Word with the squiggly green and red underlines when I am perfectly happy with the grammar.
Most people around here are more concerned with content than precision (especially - dare I say - the North American colonists) and you seem not to be in great need of a spellchecker.

I use Word because it's what I'm used to. It's been going down hill for years. I must have been using it for 10 years, possibly longer. The funny thing is, the more "intuitive" and "friendly" microsoft try to make it (and the rest of their software), the more infuriating I find it to work with. Does anyone ever get any sense at all out of that loathsome "office assistant"? The first thing I do now when I get a new version foisted on me (2000 came with the new computer, I wouldn't "upgrade" deliberately) is try to get rid of all the "useful" features. I didn't get rid of the em-dash because it didn't seem to cause any undue annoyance until it turned to mush in the forum environment. I got rid of the awful "smart quotes" straight away and the "correct as you type" feature. All the interfering, niggling nonsense had to go. But it still gets me from time to time. I don't know how they have the nerve to call that grammar checker impersonator a Grammar Checker - it never spots real grammar foul-ups but has an absolute obsession with the "passive voice". There. Now I've worn out my quotes key - it may never work again (which would be a drag because I depend on it to give me a "2").

I hope nobody's keeping too close an eye on my content or precision. I don't want any trouble!

I thoroughly agree - I'm afraid I have little patience with many of these features in Word. The "Office Assistant" never made it off the CD when I installed Office, and I got rid of the grammar checker too. The thing I find most annoying about any software is when it starts doing things without asking me first. My spelling is pretty good and while I can put up with a few little squiggly red lines I resent it actually correcting things as I type. (Maybe I want to write "doe snot" rather than "does not" or "sot hat", not "so that"...)
I find a lot of "helpful" features in Windows can be equally infuriating... but there are too many little niggly bits to moan on about right now. I think that would deserve its own forum anyway. (Maybe it has one already?)

Yes, I think you're right. The subject requires a dedicated forum to thrash out the issues or act as a kind of microsoft users' therapy group. One of the boys at work insists on keeping the assistant. He imagines it might do something useful some day (one of these people who, in general, has faith). He has the Einstein rather than the paper clip because he thought that would make it less irritating, but it doesn't. Every now and then I hear this bellow of frustration as the assistant pops up to offer him some insane suggestion at an inopportune moment.