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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3750 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 8, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Have you ever gnashed your teeth at the choice of an author to use " – " rather than "—", "he" rather than "they", or a semicolon list within a single paragraph rather than a bullet list comprising multiple paragraphs? Well, gnash no more! Never forget that nothing can stop you from ripping that author's """copyright-protected""" """intellectual property""" out of the webpage or the paper page on which it sits, and forcibly remaking it to suit your fancy. Word, LaTeX, Notepad++—there are many ways to fuck the text into submission and ejaculate your grammatical and orthographical preferences all over its fertile womb. Just Do It!

If only I had an em dash key on my keyboard - then I might use it!

In HTML, and by extension in Markdown, "& m d a s h ;" (without the extra spaces—the code element doesn't work properly on this website) → "—". XHTML also allows you to define your own custom references to special characters (or even to sequences of characters) at the top of the file.

Outside of HTML, in Windows you can copy-and-paste special characters out of the built-in but somewhat subpar Character Map application, or out of a more complete piece of software like BabelMap. (I don't know what analogous options Linux and MacOS have.)

@Tyre_Inflator

I don't know what analogous options Linux and MacOS have.

At least with a standard MacOS keyboard setup, "option" key + "-" gives you en dash: –, and "shift"+"option"+"-" gives you em dash: —.

Yeah, how are we supposed to even use that character without memorizing 4 digit numpad codes that never seem to work for some reason?

Ew.

This most recently happened to me with Annals of a Fortress, a book which is certainly out of copyright. Unfortunately, my text editor refused to parse the archaic format of ink-on-paper, leaving me ravished by the author’s lust for semicolons.

As I said: rip the text out of the page! Just retype the whole thing in your text editor of choice. People do stuff of this nature all the time.

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