To remove an upvote? Reallly?

I'm joking.

I have no idea.

k

But I can't think of anything else.

I haven’t found any are cases that differ substantially from those I showed.

@tchrist that, of course, says little since for all we know it just means that what follows is usually just one thing.

Right.

Got a better idea?

Can’t grep on colons.

Not really...

But anyway, I just wanted more like your quick opinion, that's totally enough.

@tchrist No? You can do other punctuation.

Gut feeling.

@MετάEd What do I have to do, quote it as a separate token?

Go ahead, you try.

So yes, tokenize.

I tried. I failed. You try.

Where this one is going bothers me much more:

@tchrist What's the desired search?

Okay, I understand why one would want to replace "—" with "—" (though "—" would have been better as it is more widely supported). What I do not understand is, why remove the " " before the dash. That is something Simply Not Done.

They removed 0xA0 for a regular space?

hugs @Reg

You can’t let it start a line.

@RegDwighт I would not put space on either side of an em-dash. If space was desirable I would use an en-dash.

If you get rid of all spaces, it will be fine.

You can put a small space on both sides.

Or a spaced en dash, yes.

Right, you can put nonbreaking space around an en dash.

The Unicode linebreaking rules will do the right thing, I think.

You should not have to do that.

@MετάEd that's a question of style. It's beyond the point, however, that if you do put a space there, it better be a non-breaking one, or else!

@tchrist dream on.

Use U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE.

You mean I don't have better things to do with my life than putting unneeded nbsps everywhere? I'm doing that for a reason.

@tchrist because that one is so much better supported...

@KitFox thank you.

@tchrist that is a near dupe.

You would not put nonbreaking space around an en dash unless you wanted to prevent line break at the dash.

@MετάEd Exactly.

Which is precisely why it's not "around" but before.

what you get are :, what you get is :

I don't think I've ever put a non-breaking space after a dash.

Can't think of a situation in which it would even make sense.

@Reg. What is. Come talk to me in the mod room please.

> Quotation yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda blah — Reg

@tchrist It seems to work to an extent: books.google.com/ngrams/…

Note that I had to shorten the phrase.

Yup that was the trick.

@RegDwighт How about this?^

@tchrist Is there any chance that the phrases in your query simply don't exist anywhere in the corpus?

Yup.

@Cerberus ah, but that is not an em dash. That should be a long bar or whatever it's called. And when you break a line at that one, it is done before it, not after.

@Cerberus Stylistically, a space doesn't belong after the em-dash there. Just before.

@RegDwighт U+2015 HORIZONTAL BAR, aka "quotation dash".

Different linebreak properties.

@tchrist right on. Thank you.

you guys are making me feel inferior for always using a hyphen. I even use it for math!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Philistine.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 expeliamus!

@RegDwighт I'd call that a dash? And, yes, you break a line before that, which is exactly why you want the NBS, so prevent what I just did.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 what's wrong with a...

I shouldn't end that.

@MετάEd Hmm is that so? I believe it's often done like this?

@Cerberus No, just use the right code points.

@Cerberus but then you don't put it before anymore.

Perhaps I wasn't too clear.

with a dash -or- hyphen.

@RegDwighт Are you trying to spell expelliarmus?

really...there's no perceptible difference.

@MετάEd I have no idea. I don't read that shit.

nonrhotic

@RegDwighт Yeah said after, OK.

@Cerberus Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn't go away. —Philip K. Dick

like how the weasley boys say it.

Hm, I don't know if non-rhotic speakers can cast that spell

But you can keep believing that if you like.

@MετάEd stupid reality.

@tchrist Most people will not have those readily available (or have heard of them).

@Cerberus So what?

@MετάEd Can't.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 they do it all the time.

T.S. The correct codepoints exist that the right things happen.

@Mitch odd because pronunciation is key, or so the movie would have me believe.

@tchrist Eliot said that? so prescient.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I do feel that m-dashes look distinctive enough that they are a significant improvement. The minus sign, meh.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No I think Ron couldn't get the spell right because he's a stupid git.

@Cerberus I cannot see the difference at all. They're all a short horizontal line thingy. and they all mean the same thing to me. They all mean 'humpty-dumpty'.

Compare the width of -5 and +5 with that of −5 and +5. Furthermore, the MINUS does not have a break-after possibility the way a hyphen does. They are utterly different.

@Mitch The font should auto-detect why the line is being used and stretch it accordingly.

@Mitch Between which ones?

@tchrist YOu say that they are utterly different, and I can see that the widths are measurably not identical, but those differences mean nothing to me.

Line bread. Word break. Clue break.

@tchrist Uh-oh. I like the shorter one better.

Then you are wrong.

@Cerberus between hyphen, dash, em-dash, en-dash, minus, etc...

@tchrist I still think full—fledged m—dashes are of a different calibre-don't you?

LOL ah, tchrist, you're a funny guy.

@Cerberus Than what?

@Mitch But m-dashes are so big!

@tchrist which one is the minus?

@Mitch the second one

@tchrist Different from hyphens.

@Cerberus In a million ways.

@tchrist well, in two ways, at least.

U+0002D ‭ -  GC=Pd SC=Common       HYPHEN-MINUS
U+0058A ‭ ֊  GC=Pd SC=Armenian     ARMENIAN HYPHEN
U+005BE ‭ ־  GC=Pd SC=Hebrew       HEBREW PUNCTUATION MAQAF
U+01400 ‭ ᐀  GC=Pd SC=Canadian_Aboriginal CANADIAN SYLLABICS HYPHEN
U+01806 ‭ ᠆  GC=Pd SC=Mongolian    MONGOLIAN TODO SOFT HYPHEN
U+02010 ‭ ‐  GC=Pd SC=Common       HYPHEN
U+02011 ‭ ‑  GC=Pd SC=Common       NON-BREAKING HYPHEN
U+02012 ‭ ‒  GC=Pd SC=Common       FIGURE DASH
U+02013 ‭ –  GC=Pd SC=Common       EN DASH
U+02014 ‭ —  GC=Pd SC=Common       EM DASH

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 really? I would have...well OK.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I must say the long one looks a bit weird in that it is too close to the number.

@Mitch Well, I'm concluding, based on the fact that it's as wide as the plus.

@tchrist Woe me! My computer can't display the Canadian aboriginal hyphen!!

What to do?

@Cerberus Neanderthaler.

@Cerberus mine neither, and I'm a frickin' Canadian!

@tchrist man that's like all the 'space' varieties. Sure they have some typographical meaning, and help out maybe with other things, but still all look the same to me.

@tchrist I rather feel like a European aboriginal now.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 dumbfounded

Why is it "dumbfounded" and not "dumbfound" anyway?

@Cerberus and that's the one I WANT!

Ah, it is from fundo, that makes sense.

Not from Germanic find.

@Cerberus use 'gobsmacked'. not as derogatory to foundeds.

@Mitch Yes! True conoisseurs must have the C.A.H.

@Mitch But those poor Gobs!

An outrage to their culture of pacifism.

@Cerberus exactly. like maple surup (not seerup). but canadian bacon, that just ain't bacon.

@Mitch And American Cheese ain't cheese either

Is surup Canadian?

@Cerberus don't let their outward placidity fool you. still waters are probably still all the way down.

So...

@Cerberus Maple sYrup is Canadian.

They're still. All right.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 "milk products may have been processed in the same manufacturing plant as this product"

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't get it. I know the food is Canadian. How do the pronunciations vary?

@Mitch yeah seriously. In Canada though we don't call it American Cheese. We call it processed cheese.

@Cerberus Oh. I don't know. I"m just telling people how thye should pronounce it correctly, because all I hear is 'seerup'.

I say /'sɪ.rəp/.

@Cerberus some people say it more like surup, I guess. I say it more like with the i from fit.

@Mitch Oh don't even get me started.

@Mitch Really, as in seat? Not as in sit?

@Cerberus yeah, you should really see a doctor about that then.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 So who are these people?

@KitFox Hah. startedness gotten

It's a schism in our family.

@Mitch As long as he feeds me maple surrup, whynot.

@Mitch "surup" sounds like how I'd expect a texan redneck to say it. Or a Canadian redneck. We have some of those too.

@Cerberus rednecks

@Cerberus well, the 'r' modifies things a bit . but yes. the 'wrong' way (that everybody seems to use) is closer to 'seat'

EM DASH has Line_Break=Break_Both, HYPHEN has Line_Break=Break_After, MINUS SIGN has Line_Break=Prefix_Numeric, HORIZONTAL BAR has Line_Break=Ambiguous, NON-BREAKING HYPHEN has Line_Break=Glue, HYPHEN-MINUS has Line_Break=Hyphen.

Utterly different.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 How about those people most closely associated with the food? Are those Canadian "rednecks" (whitesnoots, I would think, but OK)?

Use ’em or lose ’em.

hm, I've just said the word "syrup" a bunch of times to myself and the pronunciation is all over the place.

@KitFox yeah, wtf. those other people are wrong.

@Cerberus We call them "Quebecois".

@Mitch I don't get it. The right way is as in seat but modified a bit, the wrong way is exactly like seat?

Québecois

@tchrist I'm far too lazy to type accents

@Cerberus what the heck is a 'whitesnoot'? That's exactly the exceptino that proves the rule, you can't scome up with a good derogatory term for those in power because the terms are just not that hurtful enough.

@Mitch Yeah, I know, and it's a real problem that my husband is trying to teach my sons to say it the wrong way.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ah OK. So sirò...

Syrup has the vowel of sir, her, fur, myrrh.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 ouch

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Then you should get a better computer.

@Mitch No, no, I mean Canadian provincials: their necks never get red, because there is no sunwhine, just the eternal winter, giving their skin an ivory pallor all year round.

Syrup rhymes with stirrup.

The snoot was not meant to imply snooty.

More like Indians called red-noses.

@Cerberus HA ha sorry. I'm ellipting too much. The right way (my way, not in quotes) is sirrup, 1st syllable like 'sir' = suhr. The bad 'wrong' bad person way of saying it (everybody else) is seerup, I can't IPA it, a bit dipthingized, a little y-glide right before the 'r'. It's hard to describe something you don't do and that only evil people use.

I guess if I'm speaking clearly, and carefully, I will say it more like the i in "sit", or between there and the ea in "seat". But if I'm being casual I'll say it more like the i in "sir"

@KitFox Of course it does.

@KitFox that's grounds for ... mismatching all his socks.

If I folded his socks, I might do that.

@tchrist OK. so you're not evil.

@tchrist My computer is perfectly capable of inputting those characters. I'm just too lazy to do it.

He does his own laundry though. He's an exceptionally good husband.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 zing!

@KitFox that certainly. bad people will say steerup

@Mitch Okay, so how about the i in sit? How does that sound to you?

@Mitch like sear-up: yes, I do hear this as well. I wouldn't consider it objectionable.

If it takes more than one extra keystroke, you need a real computer.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If you were using Autohotkey, you wouldn't be so lazy.

If one is too many for you, you should be ashamed of yourself.

How do you do accents, then?

Say û.

û

All accents take two extra strokes for me, but no modifiers, and no holding down.

@tchrist If I needed to type accents on such a regular basis that I wanted to do it with two keystrokes, I'd set up the appropriate keyboard settings on the perfectly good computer I have.

Say mi.

And no reaching for the topmost row, except for ~ and macrons.

mi

@tchrist What keystrokes do you use?

Say it together.

@Cerberus oh sure, I got that. My point is that it's not -hurtful- enough and there can't ever be so. until they really are downtrodden, and then it would be reprehensible.

ALT-i followed by u.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Or copy my Autohotkey script!

@KitFox that's the way it should be

say you, say me

@cornbreadninja I do, I really do feel special things for you.

And I miss @aedia like crazy.

@cornbreadninja déjà chantée

Nah. Not entering the accents and earning tchrist's ire is way more entertaining than going to extra work to please pedants ;)

@Mitch But...provincials are not in power? And is redneck hurtful?

@KitFox :(

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Dude, I'm right here.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Neanderthaler #2.

@tchrist That's two extra strokes.

I saw one.

@Cerberus That's û, the keystrokes are ^ u.

No meta keys.

I don’t count A has requiring two keystrokes.

Do you?

@tchrist You're just such an easy target

But then, I am a touch typist.

@Cerberus this is only about 'syrup' and 'stirrup'. doesn't affect 'sit' (at least not in AmE).

Hunters and peckers have different mileage.

@MετάEd Okay, that is one extra keystroke. How about ó?

@tchrist Ain't THAT the truth.

ALT-e o.

@Cerberus Same general idea. ó is ' o.

@tchrist I absolutely do. Shift-A is way less comfortable than a to type. I count it as two strokes, with a malus for holding down, so I would count that as at least three strokes total.

@MετάEd Is that NFC or NFD?

Or I can reach it with AltGr O.

@Cerberus You are not a touch typist, then?

Excuse me?

Don’t worry, I can’t smell it from here.

@tchrist I don't know those. It's the USI keyboard.

@Cerberus I don't know how other Canadians view Quebecois (how do you do that again @tchrist? Québecois? (how do you pronounce the 'c' in that word?))

Kaybeckers.

but 'redneck' doesn't seem hurtful. unless it's somebody in a coat and tie using it.

@MετάEd That is the US keyboard for me, not the USI.

@MετάEd See, don't those dead keys annoy the hell out of you? I need to type 'e or "i etc. etc. all the time, and that's a world of hurt on some systems that have dead keys for those, at least for me.

NFD = decomposed, two code points for é etc. NFC = one code point for it.

I think the USI does NFD stuff, and US does NFC.

@Cerberus You can easily define a hotkey to toggle US or USI keyboard.

@tchrist So you agree that Shift-a is far more annoying and slow than a?

@MετάEd So...

@Cerberus That's overstating it. Remember I think in vi.

@Cerberus That means you can use the USI when you want, but only when you want.

I don't want to have to press hotkeys on top of typing accents?

Capiche nicht.

@tchrist I am not talking about such things, I am talking about normal typing...

@Cerberus I personally have USI turned on a lot. I don't mind the deadkeys.

How about when you type "a phrase like this"?

You basically need the USI if you need more than 8859-1ish.

What do you mean?

@Cerberus quote space.

He has to type a space after the quote.

seddit

I don't.

Pick your poison.

I sometimes see documents from people with dead keys on, änd they always look like this".

@Cerberus a phrase like this or "a phrase like this"? Or do you mean ' "a phrase like this" '?

“a phrase like this” is easy.

@Cerberus You have never seen me do that, because it's too easy to not do that.

@tchrist done.

@MετάEd So another keypress...and you never forget? It does not annoy you?

And so is “a phrase like ‘this’ ”.

And anyway what you'd get from me is “a phrase like this”.

@Cerberus No. Why would it?

I'll use accents left and right once they show they have them on the keyboard.

@Cerberus Do you know the verb inure?

@Mitch Heh. Confusing indeed. I mean when you have to type a quotation mark in front of a vowel.

@Cerberus Let me put it another way. I type 100 WPM. Typing simply does not get in my way.

Like this: "a

@tchrist "I just stepped in a big pile inure"

@Mitch You mean you look at your keyboard?

Wow, that must slow you down.

@MετάEd Zactly. It’s all these hunters and peckers who get all pusillanimous about it.

Or pissillanimous.

@Cerberus ?? why is a vowel special?

@MετάEd Well, on my first Windows computer, we had that (I think it is even standard in Dutch Windows), and I never completely got used to it. I kept forgetting it occasionally, even after a very long time. And that ánnoying' set-up can make your text look so bad!

reçu

@tchrist actually I take that back; I failed to notice that he also changed the bullets themselves accordingly. It's not "What we get are: 1. answers do not blah 2. reviews count blah", but "What we get are 1. answers that do not blah 2. reviews that count blah".

So basically the edit is okay with me now except for the nbsps.

Which I just fixed. :P

@tchrist Yes, and it didn't work for me.

Oh.

@MετάEd um... you think I have typos now, think of what you'd get if I weren't looking at where my fingers were going.

@MετάEd All right, then. Just to be sure.

I am just very surprised.

@Cerberus What I want is a typesetting keyboard with shortcuts to dashes, smart quotes, and so on.

@Mitch A pain in the ass?

I could use a whole extra row of keys above the numeric keys.

I want a keyboard with words instead of letters.

@tchrist -more- of such.

@Mitch The Chinese tried that. Didn’t work.

@Mitch Learn Chinese?

@Mitch try those old-school Chinese typewriters.

@Mitch Yes: they only work as dead keys before letters that can take the accent. So ánnoying'', and ïrritable", but "stupid".

jinx

jeez

@tchrist jinx

jinxes all around

@tchrist jinx²

jjjjiiinnnnxxxxx

@tchrist well .. they worked, just not well.

jinx ¹³²¹⁄₃₇₃₁₃

That's a type-setting machine right, not an actual typewriter?

@MετάEd What is a typesetting keyboard? And what are smart quotes? You mean where they curl in the right direction automatically, as in Word? I use -== to type —, by the way, and -qq for –. And ^2 for ². And o,, for °. Etc.

@Cerberus yes.

E,, for €, tm,, for ™...etc.

A typesetting keyboard meaning a keyboard with more of that sort of stuff on board.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 nice.

from here

@Cerberus smart quotes are quotes that make you look smart. Like "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend."

Inside of a dog.

@MετάEd Ah okay. I personally find it less work to set up my own shortcuts (Autohotkey calls those "hotstrings") than to remember and localise those set up by someone else. Unless they're really perfectly laid out.

:) kit

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 o domine: exaudi orationem meam: miserere nobis.

&c.

@Mitch nods Some of us are good at those. Unfortunately, I can never remember quotations.

et seq.

@Cerberus Actually for those I just use codes. “hi” is Alt 0 1 4 7 h i Alt 0 1 4 8.

I'd like to use digraphs, and I did try to get AHK to do them, but it just doesn't think like me.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Looking in to it, that's obviously a fake typewriter, like the Apollo 10 Moon landing. What have the Chinese been doing to typeset their books since forever? rubber stamps like @cornbreadninja makes?

Vanity, vanity: all is vanity! We have been here a million times before. There is nothing new under the sun.

nothin' you can wear that can't be worn

nothin' you can shear that can't be shorn

@tchrist "exaudi orationem meam:"... get your mouth of my Audi?