Em-dashes and En-dashes in RoboHelp?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Steven Oppenheimer reports: <<I am a heavy user of Em-dashes and 
En-dashes in my writing.>>

I use them too, but it's a good idea to try to cure yourself of that 
habit. Excessive use of dashes is a stylistic tic that works better in 
essays and fiction than in technical writing. Treat them like cayenne: 
use them sparingly, for taste, rather than as the main dish.

<<Unfortunately, in RoboHelp, to access these, it seems you have to 
always do the following: [snipped] Very tedious...>>

As a general rule, for characters that are difficult to insert, there 
are two excellent solutions: First, create a Word file called "common 
characters" and store the characters there, ready for cut and paste 
into other documents. (I do this on my Mac because some Mac characters 
don't show up properly on Windows systems. So whenever I get a Windows 
doc that displays these characters correctly on my Mac, I know that 
they'll be visible on both platforms.)

Second, learn to use Word's autoreplace function. Depending on your 
version of Word, you should find it under the Tools menu, hidden in the 
Autocorrect menu choice. Here, you can define a series of codes that 
Word will automatically replace with the text you want. So, for 
example, you could use --- for an em dash and -- for an en dash; as 
soon as you type them and press the space bar, Word will convert them 
into the appropriate dash. Haven't tried this, so it's possible you'll 
end up with a space after the characters; it might be simpler to use 
search and replace instead.

Third possibility:

<<Is there a keyboard shortcut for the two dashes?>>

Both Windows and Mac systems have system-wide utilities for looking up 
characters. In Windows, you're looking for the Character Map utility, 
usually hidden away under Start-->Program-->Accessories [or System 
tools] or somewhere similar. I don't have the PC up and running, or I'd 
hunt down the actual location for you. This utility shows the 
keystrokes for all special characters in all fonts.

For the em dash, its Alt-0151; for the en, it's alt-0150. (Hold down 
the Alt key and type these four-digit numbers on the numeric keypad.)

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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