EM-Dashes in Wurd

July 4, 2005 9:11 PM

While we're on the subject of M$ quirks ... why can I type "em-dashes" using ALT+0151 in the copy of Wurd I use at work -- but I cannot do this on my personal copy at home? Which program setting and/or Windows configuration governs this? (Both using XP and Word2000).
posted by RavinDave to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Not sure why it works on one machine but not the other but this sounds like an easier way to get an em dash - you can hold down the Ctrl-Alt keys at the same time as you type the minus sign (-) on the numeric keypad.
posted by tellurian at 9:34 PM on July 4, 2005

It only works if numlock is turned on. If it's not, you need to hold down the shift key. The third way of getting an em dash from Word is to type 2014<Alt+X>. U+2014 is the Unicode code point for em dash.

Also, I notice both of you should have used em dashes in this thread but you used hyphens instead—to get an em dash in HTML, use — This is something too pedantic to point out anywhere besides this question.
posted by grouse at 1:37 AM on July 5, 2005

I mean —

Fucking preview bug.
posted by grouse at 1:38 AM on July 5, 2005

ARGH! &mdash;
posted by grouse at 1:38 AM on July 5, 2005

It only works if numlock is turned on.

That solves the mystery quite nicely, Det. Grouse. Thanx!
posted by RavinDave at 2:25 AM on July 5, 2005

Fucking preview bug.

That's not the preview bug, that's just HTML being interpreted in a perfectly normal way—that sequence of symbols is supposed to produce an em dash. The preview bug is when HTML that's supposed to produce a symbol winds up as gibberish instead. Watch:

??????? ????? ? ??????? «??????» ????????????? ???????.

And...
posted by languagehat at 7:26 AM on July 5, 2005

Voilà!
posted by languagehat at 7:26 AM on July 5, 2005

languagehat: I put in &amp;emdash; and on preview it changes to &emdash; meaning I have to do the same kind of copy, preview, paste workaround you just did. Preview should be the same roundtrip.
posted by grouse at 3:30 PM on July 5, 2005

Get AllChars (freeware!) and stop memorizing these terribly unintuitive codes.

For instance,
—
is:
ctrl 3 -

and
“
is:
ctrl ` `

and
”
is:
ctrl ' '

é is ctrl e '
ô is ctrl o ^
¢ is ctrl c c
€ is ctrl e e.

You can also add your own. Stop memorizing bizarre sequences of numbers and start chord-composing your non-keyboard characters!
posted by evariste at 10:22 PM on July 5, 2005

You press the keys sequentially. In other words, you're not holding down control this whole time.
posted by evariste at 11:12 PM on July 5, 2005