Comments | dedbutdrmng: Lost

dedbutdrmng

Lost

Feb 06, 2009 15:23

I cannot find the long one of these - on my keyboard. the one for splitting up bits of sentence rather than the one for connecting words. Stupid keyboard ( Read more... )

Comments 25

(The comment has been removed)

Re: lazywebs ftw dedbutdrmng February 6 2009, 15:44:28 UTC

Mysterious stranger. I salute you.

kara_gnome February 6 2009, 15:37:30 UTC

"What goes around comes around," Maybe? Or "Up shitcreek without a paddle," :D

I just use two hyphens for the dash.

dedbutdrmng February 6 2009, 15:45:52 UTC

Two Hyphens. Of course. I didn't know if that was acceptable or not. But it is. Hurrah. Makes things much easier.

I'm sort of looking for something with darker overtones for the quote-thing. I can't quite describe what. I will know it when I see it though. probably.

sushidog February 6 2009, 15:37:45 UTC

Can't you just do two little ones together?

"A stitch in time saves nine" isn't quite what you're looking for, is it? "Give an inch, they'll take a mile"?

dedbutdrmng February 6 2009, 15:47:05 UTC

Sort of darker. nastier. You can read the whole thing if you want.

sushidog February 6 2009, 15:51:47 UTC

I'd love to! And I'll try and think of an appropriate saying, if I can.

dedbutdrmng February 6 2009, 16:08:56 UTC

Sent.

steer February 6 2009, 15:38:23 UTC

You are thinking of an en or em dash rather than a hyphen (or minus sign). I've never owned a keyboard with such a key. Most modern word processors will convert if you type -- (the hypen twice).

dedbutdrmng February 6 2009, 15:46:16 UTC

Huzzah!

vin_petrol February 6 2009, 15:39:56 UTC

If you're on a Windows box, then you could use ALT-0151 to get the em rule, which I suspect what you want. But then I have a complete printout of Windows-1252 on my desk, 'cos this is the short of shit I'm paid to worry a lot about.
You do realise that character is not in ISO-8859-1, and it makes developers like me cry?

dedbutdrmng February 6 2009, 15:48:40 UTC

Oh. But not using it makes Grammarians weep.

They frighten me a lot more than developers.

steer February 6 2009, 20:40:18 UTC

Heh... I think you find that most grammar people thing the en and em dash are best avoided. Use it too much and you look like you're Issac Asimov or writing a pamplet about the benefits of double glazing.

matgb February 6 2009, 16:46:41 UTC

I have an auto replace on my browser so any instance of two hyphens in a text box becomes an em dash.

I also use it regularly when writing, it's a habit.

Which gets really annoying when I'm trying to submit some code with some comments that are grammatically correct to a bit of software that rejects invalid characters in annoying way (like the LJ stylesheet checker, for example, it just doesn't display the code, but won't tell you why).

Whihc is a long version of saying "oh look, another instance of ISO getting it wrong"