After last week's writing tools, I played around with em dashes a little more, and one of the odd behaviors I've noticed with word processors is they have a block when it comes to making the dash play along nicely with smart quotation marks.
The smartquotes feature of Word changes the straight marks into the curled quotes we all know and love (although I had heard that copyeditors preferred the straight quotes, I don't know if that is still the case). However, Word has a bit of a mental block when it comes to getting the marks to behave correctly with the em dash. Word just doesn't know what to make of the dash, and any quotations marks following the dash are treated as you are beginning a new quote.
This means that you (or a copyeditor) would have to go through and replace all instances (not many, I'm sure) where a dash is followed by quotation marks in order to get the marks to curl in the write direction. Or there's this macro I whipped together. This can be copied straight into the normal.dot module and assigned a toolbar button or keyboard command.
Sub dashquote()
'
' dashquote Macro
' Macro recorded 6/1/2011
'
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "—" & ChrW(8220)
.Replacement.Text = "—" & ChrW(8221)
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
1001 Nights
(4)
Abraham
(11)
Adonis
(4)
Aphrodite
(18)
Apocalypse
(6)
Apollo
(5)
Arabian
(4)
Ares
(2)
Artemis
(5)
Arthur
(12)
Athena
(7)
Bard
(1)
Ben Slater
(13)
Bible
(88)
Boxing Day
(6)
Celtic
(2)
Character File
(2)
Chinese
(1)
Christian
(6)
Christmas
(1)
Conferences
(30)
creation myths
(15)
Criminalelement
(11)
Dark Business
(61)
Dark Winds
(22)
Demeter
(10)
Diomedes
(6)
Don Iverson
(4)
Eden
(5)
Enchanter
(16)
essay
(9)
Exploding Storm Rider Mystery
(1)
F3
(632)
F³
(2)
Fairhaven Club
(6)
Fairy Tales
(20)
Family
(2)
Flood Myth
(8)
Flynn
(84)
Greek
(96)
Greeks
(1)
Guest
(1)
Hades
(10)
Halloween Fall Formal
(6)
Hercules
(9)
Hestia
(2)
Hindu
(2)
History Prof
(22)
Holiday
(12)
Holiday Myths
(6)
Incan
(1)
Iranian
(2)
Jacob
(13)
Japanese
(1)
Job
(21)
Joseph
(18)
Judges
(12)
Knowledge Myths
(3)
Levite
(12)
Library
(8)
Life
(123)
Love Gods
(4)
M3
(253)
M³
(1)
map
(13)
Matt Allen
(268)
Medieval
(7)
Metamyth
(5)
Misc Flash
(36)
Mom
(1)
monthly chart
(21)
Movies
(6)
Myth Law
(2)
Myth Media
(4)
NaNoWriMo
(22)
Noah
(5)
noir
(9)
Noir Tales
(1)
Norse
(10)
Odyssey
(8)
Persephone
(15)
Perseus
(14)
Persian
(1)
Poseidon
(1)
Prometheus
(8)
publishing
(24)
ramble
(113)
Red Riding Hood
(6)
Review
(1)
Sam Faraday
(53)
Samson
(14)
Santa's Helper
(3)
Scavenger Hunt
(20)
Sci Fi
(15)
science
(1)
Serial
(84)
short story
(14)
Spotlight
(8)
Storm Riders
(139)
Teaching
(136)
Tech
(18)
Transformation
(5)
Travel
(27)
TV
(10)
TV Myth
(1)
Underworld
(6)
Unhappily
(2)
Vacation
(15)
vampires
(18)
W3
(11)
WIP
(20)
Writing
(166)
Writing Tools
(16)
Zeus
(21)