The ever-annoying MS Word hyphen

Can anyone explain to me why sometimes the hyphen is long, and sometimes short? For years now, and still it occasioanlly produces a mix of the two in any given list.

A long "hyphen" is normally an en rule, as in 1996-1998, or an em rule - which is what that last one should be.

In English grammar there are two dashes, the en-dash and the em-dash. There's also the hyphen.

This may be a helpful link.

As far as Word is concerned, the default is that it will lengthen a hyphen if it is surrounded by spaces, otherwise leave it as is. This can be turned off in the auto-correction dialog.

Edited by cheshire_man (Fri 03-Dec-10 17:43:42)

Strangely though, sometimes it doesn't lengthen it, even if surrounded by spaces. That's the issue. I will settle for either, but not both, and would like MS Word to be consistent in that sense.

I've disabled the autocorrection option you mentioned, and will see how things go. Ta very much!

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Can anyone explain to me why sometimes the hyphen is long, and sometimes short? For years now, and still it occasioanlly produces a mix of the two in any given list.

There's a lot about Word that is inexplicable.

When you mark a paragraph why does it include the style information for the following text?
Ie;You mark the last paragraph in a section, hit delete and the following section heading becomes normal text.

Mind you - Word isn't a patch on Excel for sheer stupidity. I loathe Excel.

Glad I'm not the only one with the problem. I thought it was my limited understanding preventing me using the thng correctly. I have coped with the problem by using the minus key instead. Pressing it gives a short hyphen, holding down Ctrl and pressing it, the longer

There is generally a logic to it - perhaps not the logic you want though!

Word has always effectively stored paragraph info inside the, normally invisible, paragraph mark (with document info inside the last paragraph mark). It has to keep it somewhere linked to the text. The best way to make word more predictable is to take the time to get to grips with paragraph styles which lets you set rules about what happens when you start a new paragraph.

The way Word handles en & em dashes does have a consistency about it too. an en (short) will be turned into an em (long) dash when it has a space each side after you type the next word followed by another space or a punctuation mark. You have to be careful if editing text not to forget that, if you want to add a word after the dash, and you want it to turn into an em dash, you need to type a space (or punctuation) after even if you immediately delete it.

Out of interest, what do you find so stupid about Excel? Maybe I've just used it for too long to notice. Just don't get me started about Publisher!!

The most annoying things with excel
If you input a date in a1 and you want to have a row of the same date, you cannot drag the date down the column unless you want it to add a day onto that date.
ie 1/1/11 becomes 2/1/11 etc.
and if you delete data in a total box, i.e sum=a1:a10, you get nothing as you delete that as well!!! groan.

In reply to a post by blfamily:

The most annoying things with excel
If you input a date in a1 and you want to have a row of the same date, you cannot drag the date down the column unless you want it to add a day onto that date.
ie 1/1/11 becomes 2/1/11 etc.

Just hit Ctrl+D while it's all highlighted - does a Fill Down.

Edit: Another - better? - way is to drag down with the right mouse button and click Copy Cells on the context menu that pops up.

Edited by cheshire_man (Tue 15-Mar-11 09:28:31)

In reply to a post by blfamily:

The most annoying things with excel
If you input a date in a1 and you want to have a row of the same date, you cannot drag the date down the column unless you want it to add a day onto that date.
ie 1/1/11 becomes 2/1/11 etc.

...or fill same date in two cells e.g. 1/1/11in A1, 1/1/11in A2. Highlight both cells and then you can copy/drag down.