Formatting apostrophes in word [PROBLEM RESOLVED]

Mr Flibble

They've been very bad, Mr Flibble
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 6, 2008
Messages
18,889
Reaction score
5,029
Location
We couldn't possibly do that. Who'd clear up the m
Website
francisknightbooks.co.uk
So, my WIP has suddenly changed from doing this properly to not. Gawd knows why, or how to change it back (Word 2002 btw)


The spacing around apostrophes has changed, so that when, frex, I type "it'll" the apostrophe has no space of its own and appears to merge into the surrounding letters.

Randomly, the doc has also stopped letting me do em dashes and insists they be en dashes...oh, and it stopped formatting ellipses as well, shortening them so they look like two full stops but really close together.

What the hell have I done and how do I undo it?
 
Last edited by a moderator:

alleycat

Still around
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 18, 2005
Messages
72,873
Reaction score
12,224
Location
Tennessee
I'm not sure where they are in Word 2002 (I use Word 2010 now, which is quite a bit different), but there are several options for these type of things; Word will automatically replace certain marks with others, or not, depending on what you've selected (straight vs. curly quotes, dashes, etc.). Poke around in your Options settings.
 

Mr Flibble

They've been very bad, Mr Flibble
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 6, 2008
Messages
18,889
Reaction score
5,029
Location
We couldn't possibly do that. Who'd clear up the m
Website
francisknightbooks.co.uk
Yeah I took a look there, but nothing helps, sadly. I tried opening an old file (to see where there might be formatting differences.)Sadly it applied this new formatting to the old file. It actually took my em dashes and makes them overstrike the surrounding characters...

I don't recall changing any settings -- I've had the style set up for years so no need to change it!

Really scratching my head.
 

alleycat

Still around
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 18, 2005
Messages
72,873
Reaction score
12,224
Location
Tennessee
That's odd about the over-striking. It probably won't help, but you might try logging out and rebooting and then bringing up a Word file. Sometimes things just get wonky.
 

Marlys

Resist. Love. Go outside.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
3,584
Reaction score
979
Location
midwest
Have you printed out a page to see if it carries over to print? It could be a display issue.
 

Laer Carroll

Aerospace engineer turned writer
Super Member
Registered
Temp Ban
Joined
Sep 13, 2012
Messages
2,478
Reaction score
268
Location
Los Angeles
Website
LaerCarroll.com
Except that the problem is not resolved, just narrowed down. It displays poorly on the screen, though not in print. We need to be able to preview what we write as accurately as we can.

I haven't a clue. I use 2002 also, not having any need for the bells & whistles added to later versions. I've never seen this behavior in over a decade of using 2002 at home & presently at my lady's where I'm dog-sitting while she visits her ill dad.

Anyone else with? Who does have a clue?!

Francis, could you email me via PM with an attached sample? I'll see what I can come up with.
 
Last edited:

Reziac

Resident Alien
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 20, 2010
Messages
7,451
Reaction score
1,177
Location
Brendansport, Sagitta IV
Website
www.offworldpress.com
It could be some other program corrupting memory, which happened to affect Word. If you've installed something recently (including any automatic updates), that's a possibility.

It could also be marginal RAM in your system (or the motherboard's memory bus) -- you might try MemTest and see what it says.

I had a box many years ago with a couple of iffy RAM chips, and the only real symptom was that if a program happened to use more than a certain amount of memory, it would either freeze (if the program did sanity checking) or do stuff like omit characters on the screen (in programs that didn't check their work). When a box has only 1mb of RAM and uses it in DOS's linear fashion, it's fairly easy to chase down the culprit. :) I locked out that section of memory, and all was well again.

Back to something that got installed or updated -- screen corruption (which may extend to print corruption) of that sort can also be caused by something galloping off with all of the resource heaps. (Run a dozen instances of Nero and watch it happen even on modern Windows.) Check to see if you've got something running in the background that gets out of hand, like perhaps the latest version of Moz/Firefox or Chrome, both of which are known to run off with more than their share of memory, and it's possible an old Mozilla resource heap bug might be back (it's never been fixed, but it's sometimes invisible).
 
Last edited: