h a l f b a k e r yThe embarrassing drunkard uncle of invention.
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— Key
A computer key for the em dash. | |
It seems like I use the em dash (—) a lot more than I use some
characters that traditionally have spots on the keyboard (^,`, |). It's
annoying when I'm not writing on Word and I want to use an em dash. I
have to copy and paste it from another location. There's probably some
kind of keyboard
shortcut assigned to the —, but that's too
cumbersome. I want a key that does this —————— when I press it six
times.
The Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator
http://msdn.microso...lobal/bb964665.aspx
(This doesn't seem to work with Windows 7) [ldischler, May 22 2010]
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Annotation:
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So either buy a Mac keyboard for your pc, which, as Ian points out, has a shortcut for the em dash, or redefine your keyboard using the free Layout Creator (see link). |
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I have seen eighteenth century printed books which use the underscore for this purpose _ an interesting alternative to the em dash. |
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— and of course, I hardly need to mention how useful “em”
and “en” are in Scrabble… |
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I thought this was going to be a key for giving someone a
bun. |
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Try "Ctrl" and the Num-pad "-". Works in Word on my PC, but I guess you already knew that, 'cos it doesn't work in notepad. |
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Download AutoHotKey and write your own script to
convert "------" to "—" |
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Here's your AutoHotKey script (without requiring an
end-key to trigger it since you normally have no
space, period, or enter after an m-dash). |
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Hotkeys are good, but the problem still rears its ugly head
when you try to type on a smartphone. |
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I defined -= as an en dash and =-= as an em dash, in Microsoft Word's autocorrect as you type. I find this convenient. |
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