Barry MacDonnell's Toolbox for WordPerfect for Windows - Dashes, slashes, accented letters, and underlined tabs

Barry MacDonnell's Toolbox for WordPerfect

Macros, tips, and templates for Corel® WordPerfect® for Windows® © Copyright 1996-2021 by Barry MacDonnell. All Rights Reserved.		Page updated Apr 2, 2019

Dashes, slashes, accented letters, and underlined tabs

Download DASHES.ZIP (12/28/13; 7,021 bytes)

[PDF version here]

Compatible with WordPerfect 6 and later versions

Downloading, Documentation, Modifications, and Support

"Dashes and slashes.wpd" is a short document that describes creating several small macros that insert typographical dashes and slashes that can "break" at the end of the line, rather than wrapping along with the adjacent word(s) to the next line.

This method can avoid creating unwanted large white spaces near the page margin. (See the samples below.)

The small macros described in the document are -

1. Dash-em.wcm enters an "em" dash (one with the width of the "m" character) with non-printing hyphenated soft returns on either side of it.

2. Dash-en.wcm enters an "en" dash (one with the width of the "n" character) with non-printing hyphenated soft returns on either side.

3. Dash-em2.wcm (for WordPerfect 6.x).

4. Dash-em-plus-spaces.wcm (for WordPerfect 8+).

5. Bibliography-dash.wcm (for WordPerfect X6+. May work in earlier versions.)

6. Slash.wcm enters a forward slash ("/") with a non-printing hyphenated soft return after it.

7. Ctrle.wcm inserts é in current document.

8. UnderTab.wcm creates an underlined Tab with a mouseclick. Each activation produces another underlined Tab. Underlined tabs are useful in creating lines above signatures, "fill in" lines, etc.

Simple instructions are given to add these macros to your own system. (Tip: You can assign macros to keys, toolbars, or menus. See here.)

Advantages:

Typographical dashes look better when printed than multiple hyphens, and with the addition of some hidden WordPerfect codes (see Hyphenation soft returns) -- already added to these macros -- they can be made to break more naturally at the end of lines instead of wrapping as a block of text to the next line.

Examples:

Here is a narrow column of sample text where the second dash breaks the sentence, leaving a large white space next to the right margin:

Here is the same sentence using dashes created with the macros in DASHES.ZIP:

Note that WordPerfect 8 and later versions allow you to use QuickCorrect's QuickSymbols feature to create en- and em-dashes by typing either 2 or 3 hyphens consecutively, or by typing "m-" and "n-" (without quotes). However, you may find these macros suit your needs better, and by assigning them to keys they will be available as you type.

For more on the use of dashes and slashes (a/k/a slant or virgule):

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/dash.htm

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/slash.htm