TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: one more reason not to trust software From:Niall Johnson <niallj -at- CI -dot- COM -dot- AU> Date:Wed, 14 Sep 1994 13:19:53 +1000
Matt Hicks wrote of the horrors of automatic hyphenation:
> As if we didn't have enough spellchecker horror stories, I'd like to warn
> anyone who uses MS Word's hyphenation (and probably that of other
> applications) to do so with caution. I was letting Word suggest
> hyphenations for a document I was working on this weekend; in the course
> of a couple of paragraphs, it offered the following two splits:
> in-fras-truc-ture
> or-ga-ni-za-tion
> This experience has called to mind some bad breaks that I have seen in
> magazines and newspapers of late, which I now suspect were artifacts of
> letting software do all the work. Anyway, I don't think many of us are
> foolish enough to not check something we let software alter, but I offer
> this warning to those who might yield to the temptation as a deadline
> approaches.
It is for this very reason that I always turn the hyphenation functions
off whenever I start at a new client's site (amongst other things).
It is also why I carry (always) "The Oxford Minidictionary of Spelling and
Word-division". Very useful.
--
Ciao
niall
From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000====
Niall Johnson Current address: niallj -at- ci -dot- com -dot- au
Plain English Publications Pty Ltd Current site: Corinthian Engineering
From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000====
GS/GTW d@ H S+ !g p1 au+ a- w@ v++$ C++ U N++ W+ M V po- Y+ t !5 jx R G?
tv- b++ D++ B- e+++ u** h-- f+ r++ n+ y+