Word2003 - OPTIONAL hyphens

[ChrisGreaves]

Hyphenation
I am gradually learning how to use MSWord (2003). This week was “ National Optional Hyphens week”

Hyphenation03.png

I have amassed a list of useful examples of Hard hyphens (telephone numbers “709-123-4567”, Ontario Driver’s Licence “G1234-56789-01234”).
I am currently in debate over Regular hyphens (“living-room window”, skyline. [sky line? sky-line?]). I think that the USA tends to amalgamate words, whereas the UK hyphenates them.)
But Optional hyphens? I’d not met them until this week.
Who uses Optional Hyphens?
I imagine that I might employ Optional hyphens if I were writing manuals for both the USA and UK markets. And, of course, a switch used by my Print macro to switch between Optional Hyphens and No Optional Hyphens.

I would be particularly interested in communicating with anyone who uses (manually or automagically) Optional Hyphens.

FWIW I figure on a set of six lexical units that could be examined and converted in both directions:
(1) Regular Hyphen
(2) Optional Hyphen
(3) Hard Hyphen
(4) Regular Space
(5) Hard Space
(6) <Closed String> (Chainsaw vs. Chain Saw vs. Chain saw)

Thanks
Chris

[HansV]

I currently don't hyphenate text, but when I did, I occasionally used the optional hyphen to make Word break a word (ha!) in the place I wanted, when the built-in hyphenation algorithm resulted in a break in a weird place. Dutch combines words without a space between them, like German (but less excessively), so it has more long words than English. Microsoft's algorithm at the time was not perfect.

[ChrisGreaves]

Interesting.

Microsoft Word (2003) treats an ellipsis, three dots, as a hard character: This is a three-dot ellipsis ... and so is this ....

Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Bonavista_IMG_20190717_124935210.JPG

Then of course we need a super-optional hyphen for permitting or denying page-boundary hyphenation.


Next week: Across Chapter Boundary Hyphenation.

Cheers
Chris

[HansV]

Microsoft Word (2003) treats an ellipsis, three dots, as a hard character

That's AutoCorrect changing three separate dots to a single character...

[ChrisGreaves]

Microsoft Word (2003) treats an ellipsis, three dots, as a hard character

That's AutoCorrect changing three separate dots to a single character...

Right!
Like I said:-
"Microsoft Word (2003) treats an ellipsis, three dots, as a hard character"


Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Another oddity, as far as I can see, the MsgBox statement does not display hard hyphens

Code: Select all

strResult = strReplaceAll(strResult, Chr$(45), Chr$(30))

Code: Select all

Sub testPhone()
    Selection.TypeText (UW.strphone)
    MsgBox UW.strphone
End Sub

HardHyphens.png

The little test macro types the hard-hyphens in the document, but does not display them in the MsgBox pop-up.
Cheers
Chris

[HansV]

MsgBox is a generic VBA function. ASCII character 30 is the - normally invisible - record separator character; VBA doesn't "know" that Word uses it as non-breaking hyphen.

[ChrisGreaves]

MsgBox is a generic VBA function. ASCII character 30 is the - normally invisible - record separator character; VBA doesn't "know" that Word uses it as non-breaking hyphen.

Thanks Hans.
I am gradually accumulating knowledge about these various hyphens and spaces.
Once the mortgage is paid off I might do a PhD .....
Cheers
Chris