The forum will not allow me to type characters that are not on the Approved List. For example, if I print five dots as an expression of helpless frustration, the forum will think I’m being a silly goose and snap me back to the three dot Ellipsis character.
I know there’s a way to tag characters as Let It Lay. Stop helping me. I was told once and I failed to write it down.
Koz
I’m guessing many people don’t know how many dots an ellipsis should have.… (← that really should be four dots—a period followed by an ellipsis.) (In typesetting I like to use plain periods separated by narrow-no-break-spaces, U+202F. . . .)
.....
or
\.\.\.\.\.
seems to do the trick.
Oh, I get it. The "real " ellipsis is in the middle not on the bottom.
Writing that down.
Koz
Yeah, I used .… here to preserve all four dots:
and . . . . here:
The second example is how I do it when typesetting ebooks and the like, since it looks much better to me (a period followed by an ellipsis character has inconsistent spacing in some typefaces), and the spacing more closely follows CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style) guidelines and in the kind of books that I publish.
I have a CMOS. I had to get the bookcase reinforced.
The five dots was just an example. I’m after The Magic Characters that bracket Something Special I want to print that the forum will leave alone.
For another example, have you ever tried to get the forum to leave two blank lines?
`
That’s the closest I ever got.
Koz
You got me curious.
Two
blank
lines.
Use \ on a line of its own. \ has many wonderful uses.
Backslash is the answer. You do have to watch where you put the period after the Windows System Drive C:\ .
Koz
You can double up the backslash to make a single backslash: C:\\. → C:\.
Makes my head hurt.
The first backslash doesn’t do anything and is there for show. The second backslash hides the blank space between that and the period.
Why doesn’t the first backslash hide the second backslash?
Koz
The first backslash is the escape character, which tells the interpreter that the following character is meant to be that literal character. The second backslash is what’s shown.
Ah! Got it.
So that’s the slash mark protecting the CR/LF five posts up.
Koz
\
It works oddly for me. The above is Return, Backslash, Backslash, Return. I can’t ever get repeating pure blank lines. This is a typing composition screen grab.
I wonder if there’s a different backslash character on this keyboard. Or did I miss something?
Koz
It works only if there’s a line of text after the backslash:
(Curiously, it works even if there’s no line of text above the backslash.)
After the last backslash.
Koz
Doesn’t work if you insert blank spaces at the end. That gives you the Dangling Backslash.
Koz
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