Using proper punctuation marks
I recently learned that the lovable character between the 0 and the = key on QWERTY keyboards is not a hyphen (U+2010) nor a minus (U+2212), but a hyphen–minus (U+002D). Not just that, but I learned of the existence of various dashes, such as the figure dash (U+2012), en dash (U+2013), and em dash (U+2014).
Using proper punctuation marks can be especially hard for the simple fact that they don’t exist on my keyboard. Microsoft Word will automatically replace two hyphens with a dash, but what about the rest of the apps I use? For now, I’m stuck using the tedious Alt+Numpad formula, or copy–pasting from the Character Map. I think this auto–correction would be a great thing to integrate into Windows, perhaps into an IME. Call it the next evolution of input, like how speech recognition was added to Vista.
Related Posts
- Automatic hyphenation on October 20, 2008 in Grammar, Punctuation
