User talk:Art LaPella/How to make dashes

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Hi. Cntrl-C will get you nowhere on a Mac. Tony (talk) 05:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And the correct keystroke on a Mac is option-hyphen. We Mac users don't have Alt keys (although Apple puts that label on the keyboard for those of use unlucky enough to dual-boot into Windows once in a while.) Imzadi 1979 → 08:11, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
How is it now? And what do you use instead of ctrl-c and ctrl-v? Never mind, you wouldn't copy and paste if you can option-hyphen. Art LaPella (talk) 13:55, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But the short explanation still makes no mention of the fact that you're talking about Windows keyboards. This needs to be stated. Tony (talk) 02:41, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand. "Copy and paste this: – , or — . The first is called an "en dash", and the longer one is called an "em dash". For Macs: Option hyphen, and ignore the rest of the page, which is for Windows." "Copy and paste" applies only to Windows (with no reference to keyboards), but it's overridden by the "For Macs:" part. – is an "en dash", regardless of keyboards. The copy and paste explanation is about Windows keyboards, but that is stated: "For Macs: ... ignore the rest of the page, which is for Windows." How would you say it? Art LaPella (talk) 03:57, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Silly me. I leapt to a false conclusion by not reading it closely this time. Sorry. Tony (talk) 04:07, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve made a few changes at User:JeffConrad/Dash entry. I’ve removed a couple of things and added a couple; whether there’s any significant change is debatable.

A few general comments:

  • As I’ve mentioned, I think the “Get a Mac” approach is a non-starter, and mentioning it just distracts. Moreover, though the Mac key sequences are shorter, most of them aren’t exactly mnemonic.
  • I question whether {{ndash}} should even be mentioned, because it’s not the same as the character entity ndash. Certainly, the template is far less painful to type and read when a spaced en dash is wanted, but most style manuals call for the en dash to be unspaced (except perhaps as an alternative to an em dash).
  • Using two hyphens for an en dash is a bad idea, because this is almost universally understood as representing an em dash. Accordingly, I put it under em dash. I assume the sentence “It makes people think we don't know how to make dashes, which is bad for our image” was tongue-in-cheek; I would comment that, like typewriter quotes, it’s bad typography, but the meaning is usually clear—much better than hyphens, spaced and unspaced, that one often finds in web pages, even from quality publishers like the Washington Post.
  • There are pros and cons to changing Wikimedia software to follow the TeX convention of two hyphens for en dashes and three hyphens for em dashes. Obviously, doing so would simplify markup, but the using “---” for an em dash would not be obvious to the casual editor, who well might end up unintentionally entering en dashes where en dashes were intended. JeffConrad (talk)

At first glance, these instructions seem horribly intimidating, especially with my additions. I wonder if the simplest approach might be to build on Help:Special characters#Editing, Unicode input, and Alt code, perhaps including a table of Alt codes for the most common characters (e.g., User:JeffConrad/Keystrokes).

  • Art, I discourage the use of the dash template, because it's always spaced. Then you get people doing this: 1982 – 1901 (well, with slightly smaller spaces, but it's not a good look). Will you consider adding on the left-side basic explanation "(where a spaced en dash is appropriate – such as where interrupting within a sentence)", or something like that? Tony (talk) 09:46, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I won't object to JeffConrad's version, and prefer at least parts of it. It answers Tony's objection too. Let's use it. I'm more concerned about doing something than about the details. Of course it's "horribly intimidating"; hence "Short explanation", "Long explanation", and "Are you sure you want the long explanation?" My thought was to edit WP:DASH to say something like "See also Wikipedia:How to make dashes", so I think "the most common characters" wouldn't accomplish much except to add an extra layer of complexity. Which sounds like "simple instructions": "type 0150" or "Find your character on this table (where it's likely to have some obscure abbreviation you won't recognize), find the associated umphamagiggle number, and type the umphamagiggle number. God knows how much of the table will work on your system."? If someone wants to enter an a umlaut, why would they be looking at WP:DASH? So I think building on Help:Special characters etc. should be a separate project. If you're already at WP:DASH then you know you want a dash, in which case Help:Special characters is about 100 times harder to understand than "Copy and paste –. Do you really want the long explanation?"
    • Anyway, the main point is: can we link something to WP:DASH and then change it, before it fades into history like other good ideas like WP:Manual of Style/Register? I would think Tony in particular would be interested in explaining dashes, because people would be more likely to use dashes if they didn't dismiss dashes as something for computer experts.
    • This is really work time, so you might not see me a few hours. Art LaPella (talk) 14:19, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I just made this edit to my version, so we might want to change JeffConrad's version to match. Art LaPella (talk) 15:04, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I’ll incorporate them. JeffConrad (talk) 00:19, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The table of alternative methods does include some bad choices. The main point is to show why I, and nobody else, prefer copy and paste when explaining to someone who has never entered a dash. All of the suggestions others prefer, including template ndash and "Get a Mac", are harder to prepare and learn, and less likely to be attempted by someone who is just trying to enter one lousy character. Art LaPella (talk) 16:23, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve never seen the problem with using the character links on the edit page, though I think the usage could be a bit more obvious. In particular, “Insert” (or perhaps even better, “Insert characters”) should be above the dropdown box, and the first entry in the box should be something like “Basic punctuation” or “Basic symbols” so that it is parallel to the others. There also should be a Help link to a page that covers only the character links. The material we’re working on here would be a good starting point; perhaps the most important is setting the insertion point before clicking the link. The behavior of the quote links should also be explained because it’s different from that of the other links (i.e., it quotes a highlighted selection), and its behavior with wikEd is slightly different still. It would also help to have the tooltips indicate the character that is to be inserted; although most are self-evident to a person familiar with special characters, a few may confuse (e.g., primes vs. quotes).
Another minor thought: in my version, I’ve used Ctrl+C rather than Ctrl-C (which I normally use and which I think is the most common way of doing it) to keep the notation consistent between this and key sequences that involve longer strings (e.g., Alt+0150). I think either approach would be fine as long as it was used consistently.
And again, as much as I truly love en dashes (I had to add one to troff many years ago), I hope we would consider extending this to some other common non-ASCII characters. Entering them really isn’t that hard once it’s known how to do it. Finding how is apparently what’s currently difficult. JeffConrad (talk) 00:19, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Ctrl symbol is a good idea. I suggest removing the first row in the big section and just adding a short point at the end of the upper box. The whole thing is dauntingly long, and starting the long explanation with a big row about the short section seems unwise. Tony (talk) 02:44, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The "Get a Mac" section would irritate me if I were a Windows user. I think it should go. Tony (talk) 02:46, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused as to whose version is the one we're working on. Can they be conflated? I am also confused as to whether this is a how-to page or a document of much wider scope, providing information that is not necessary for the editor who comes along seeking quick advice. The shorter the better, and if other information is necessary, can it not be sequestered in a further section? Tony (talk) 08:12, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why are people being advised to go through the hard way of highlighting an existing dash, rather than simply double-clicking on it? Tony (talk) 10:44, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, maybe I need to TALK LOUDER, because I'm having the same problem with both of you!
Tony: My edit summary explains double-clicking doesn't just select the dash; it selects unwanted characters to go with it. I have since verified that on two browsers on each of three computers. Mousing over isn't the hard way, it's the only way I know of. Perhaps there's another way that works.
JeffConrad:If you haven't seen the problem with the character links, in addition to what I said in the table I might have also said that clicking to paste and then clicking the copied character is the opposite of what one would expect, given that copy-and-paste is used in so much other software. And if you disagree with what you can find above by searching for umlaut, you could debate it at that same level of detail. Art LaPella (talk) 14:06, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Art, I guess different people have different takes on this. With copy and paste, the insertion point can be set either before or after copying the desired characters. The requirement to first set the insertion point isn’t unique to the Wikimedia character links; requirements are similar with many right-click character palettes, and with the Insert>Symbol feature of Microsoft Word. I agree with Tony that it’s much harder to find a dash to copy and paste—you need to find an article that contains a dash, recognize that it’s an en dash, and then copy and paste it into the edit window. Of all the techniques we have listed, this is one that never occurred to me. As I’ve said, Wikimedia could easily make use of the character link much more obvious by changing the labeling and including a Help link—perhaps we could create the Help article to get the ball rolling (assuming such an article doesn’t already exist somewhere). JeffConrad (talk) 22:05, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I didn't know your second and third sentences, and at least you thought it through; that was the main point. It's in Wikipedia space now, so maybe someone will rewrite it altogether, but at least we will have something, and I can relax about it. Did you mean we should also change the edit screen to link to a new help page? Something like "How to type unusual characters", linked to a help page, would work much better than "Insert" followed by gibberish (it doesn't even resemble dashes etc. because of the underlining). I never knew what the Insert line was for until I read about it somewhere else. Based on my experience with writing instructions here and at Did You Know, I don't have much confidence that I can get such an explanation accepted in a part of Wikipedia where I haven't spent years mastering the details. Art LaPella (talk) 22:33, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
PS: I couldn't verify that "the insertion point can be set either before or after copying the desired characters". I tried several permutations of what that might mean in a Microsoft Word document. If I click a position in the document and ctrl-v, it doesn't wait for me to ctrl-c; it naturally copies what was on my clipboard from last time, and even if I restart the operating system to clear the clipboard, nothing changed after I ctrl-v, selected and ctrl-c. Or if I click the destination position without ctrl-v, then select text, ctrl-v, then ctrl-c, nothing happens. Click destination position, select text, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, nothing happens. Click destination position, select text by double-clicking instead of mousing over (which requires another click), no difference. So unless I missed something, the world is accustomed to copy and paste, not paste and copy. Art LaPella (talk) 23:23, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
PPS: Similar results using Notepad. Art LaPella (talk) 23:36, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Art, I should have qualified my statement “the insertion point can be set either before or after copying the desired characters”. It’s only correct if the copy is from another document (or a dialog such as Insert > Symbol); copying from within the same document changes the cursor position, so it doesn’t work.

I had definitely envisioned a link to a Help page explaining how the links work. I’d prefer a heading more like “Insert special characters” because

  1. They aren’t necessarily unusual, and
  2. No typing is involved.

Like you, I have no idea how to formally propose this, let alone make it happen. But perhaps an article such as Wikipedia:Special character links could be a start, requiring only a link. To be honest, I find it mind-boggling that such help doesn’t already exist. Such an article clearly should not be limited to dashes, though.

This issue is symptomatic of a greater problem with Wikipedia. Even if information exists (which often is the case), it’s often not easy to find. With a conventional style guide, a search of the TOC or the index will often locate the material; with Wikipedia, a search (of the proper namespace!) will often find what’s wanted, though at least to me, the process is more difficult and more dependent on luck. If we want editors, especially new ones, to follow WP guidelines, we should make it easy to find the information. Offhand, though, I have no idea how to address this. I guess we deal with it one issue at a time. JeffConrad (talk) 02:40, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I got paste and copy to work by clicking the position in document 2, copying from document 1, and clicking document 2 to reselect the document before pasting. Probably not a popular procedure.
I think people would understand "special characters". I'm not so sure about "insert". If I want to say "Erwin Schrödinger", I might describe my dilemma as "Is there a way to type German letters?", "letters not on my keyboard", or if I'm lucky maybe even "special characters". But I don't want to insert anything. I just want to type it. Admittedly "type" is a lie, but if you know that the procedure includes inserting, do you really need the instructions?
Yes, it's counter-intuitive that we have an article called Wikipedia:Special characters written in computerese, without ever explaining how to put the characters in an article. Of course Wikipedia:Special character links wouldn't be limited to dashes. I think something you find while reading WP:DASH should be limited to dashes, because generalizing would add more confusion than useful information, given that the reader was reading WP:DASH.
The "greater problem with Wikipedia" is built into its volunteer nature. To me the wonder isn't that it isn't more efficient; it's that it works at all. If a scientist writes an article on the planet Mercury, he isn't paid and he can't even sign it, but at least he can sign his edits. That gives him a little fame in exchange for his contribution. But if you make information easier to find, by making disambiguation pages for instance, people won't stop to think that the Mercury disambiguation page can be as valuable as the Mercury (planet) page, because the astronomy page is useless if you can't find it. So disambiguaters don't get fame at all. I should probably be spending more time over at Simple English Wikipedia. I think that's where the future is for readers, after more information is added and cleaned up.
Instructions on how to insert characters would partially depend on some idea of what the edit page would look like. "To find your special character, click the blue arrow" where? To the right of where you clicked the link for the help file? Art LaPella (talk) 04:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I suggested Insert because it’s used in other common programs, such as MS Word, and because “type” is confusing precisely because it is a lie—the actual process is nothing like typing (as would be the case with an Alt code). Perhaps the help article I suggested could be the practical version of WP:Special characters, again with a direct link from below the edit window. Of course, I agree that WP:Dash should confine itself to dashes; however, I would find it difficult to justify an article of length similar to that of the one just created for all of the commonly used special characters. The help article, rather than WP:Dash, is where the generality belongs.
Much of the difficulty in getting all the information arises from the nature of a Wiki, as well as the volunteer aspect of Wikipedia. All we can really do is address one issue at a time, as we seem to be doing here. As I think I said in the recent interminable discussion about quotes, I think I’ve spent less time in my entire life entering special characters than some editors spent in that discussion alone saying why it can’t be done. It really just isn’t that difficult; that it is seeming so suggests that we aren’t getting this across. Again, we’ve probably just taken one small step toward fixing this; with a bit of additional effort, we might be able to accomplish a large part of what remains. JeffConrad (talk) 08:18, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If the word "Insert" communicates to editors that this is how to input special characters, then the existing edit screen accomplishes that. It says "Insert" followed by the special characters to be inserted, so there's nothing much to explain. It already says "Insert" unless you change it, which means you have already experimented with it. In my case, I edited Wikipedia for years, or at least months, before it first occurred to me that I could input special characters, at first by copying and pasting them. "Insert" may be used in MS Word, but I often use MS Word and I don't recognize that feature, and thus it wasn't until much later that I learned to use Wikipedia's "Insert" on the edit screen. I might have learned inserting by experimenting with it, but the word "Insert" followed by gibberish gave me no clue that it would do anything more useful than the other obscure links around the screen. The top of this edit screen, for instance, has an extra "Special characters" link that I just noticed for the first time. Art LaPella (talk) 22:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Insert would be fine if it paralleled the other selections in the drop-down box. But it doesn’t, rather selecting a few common punctuation and other symbols. Putting Insert above the drop-down box and having each selection in the drop-down box indicate what can be inserted would seem more logical to me.
Be assured that I also wondered how the insert feature worked (originally, there was no drop-down box—all symbols and tags were shown). A decent help link, possibly including much of what we’ve worked on here, should go a long way toward demystification. At least it would have helped me . . . JeffConrad (talk) 00:25, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But didn't the line above the main edit screen, including the "Special characters" link, come out when they gave us the Wikipedia:Vector skin? If so, then the "Insert" below the edit box is presumably kept only for people who painfully learned that system and don't want to learn a new one, and "Special characters" is what they want us to use now. "Special characters" is easier to understand than "Insert [arrow] – — ‘ ‘ “ ", and the special characters are shown in a larger font, which is better because ö, ō, õ, and ǒ, for instance, are hard to distinguish on a small screen. So if anything is to be re-explained, I think it's the Vector "Special characters" link. And they won't listen to us, because they spent months analyzing usability, and I'm more of a rabble-rouser for usability than a professional on that issue. Although it still seems they could use a "Help" link in addition to all those obscure languages. There's a "Help" link just to the right of "Special characters", but that's help for how to code things like headings, not help to explain that inserting special characters needs to be done backwards (a point you haven't conceded anyway). Art LaPella (talk) 01:45, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Um . . . where does “Special characters” appear? We could get the ball rolling by creating the help article; a direct link would be ideal, but having to find the article by the usual means would seem better than not having it at all. Putting a character description in the tooltips would help distinguish among similar glyphs, but there’s not much we can do about that. JeffConrad (talk) 09:04, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Edit any page. Most of the page is a big rectangle and you can change anything within that rectangle. Assuming you didn't say "Take me back" when Wikipedia:Vector skin came out, just above the rectangle is a line that begins with "B I". Look for the words "Special characters" on that line.
I've opened a discussion at Help talk:Special characters#Real help for newcomers. Art LaPella (talk) 18:57, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wow . . . it’s amazing what you can find if you look . . . Given the retention of the links below the edit window, I never thought to look above; the inclusion of both seems a bit bizarre. I completely agree, incidentally, that “Special characters” is the intuitive description. JeffConrad (talk) 23:50, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm unused to checking back every edit-summary. Fine. 14:31, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
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