Bill: Good of you to comment. I am not sure I understand what you mean by using enclosing quotes as part of the sequence to be replaced by auto-correction. Please explain.
As to the convenience of the MSWord Autocorrect feature, I find it quicker and easier to use once set as I wrote than ASCII or any other method. My writing was intended to show how to do it, not to persuade. However, typing m3 that changes automatically to m³, u to µ, etc. requires the least amount of strikes of any method. Over the years I noticed that one or two of my selected shortcuts have the flaw you mentioned. Some I changed and others I never did having been too used to the quirk to bather with finding a better shortcut. It took me and a friend a while to figure out the described method (some 20 years ago - it was then published in Metric Today). Since, it saved me tons (metric!) of time in writing the many letters, reports, manuals and training material in SI. The only problem (and it is not specific to Autocorrect) has been the need to modify the method as necessitated by the MSWord updates. Stan Jakuba ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Potts To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: 08 Jul 19, Saturday 14:25 Subject: [USMA:41450] RE: SI symbols typing Stan: I'm not sure I like the idea of using enclosing quotes as part of the sequence to be replaced by auto-correction. I use auto-correction myself (in MS Word 2003) for a number of things. For example, to create an em-dash, I type -em-. For an en-dash, I type -en-. The point about those is that short sequences enclosed by hyphens don't normally appear in text, meaning that one is therefore unlikely to get an unwanted auto-correction. Using the same logic, one could use -mu- to create a µ. As the omega is always used as the symbol for ohm, the sequence to create it would be -ohm-. Superscripted 2's and 3's can similarly be -2- and -3-. Bear in mind, in those two cases, that most fonts already include a superscripted 2 and 3. Thus, they don't require that one use the superscript font property on an ordinary 2 or 3. For this reason, I see no need to create special cases for square meters and cubic meters. Of course, I do most of the special characters by the use of the US International keyboard layout. For µ, I simply type Ctrl+Alt+m. For ² and ³, I type Ctrl+Alt+2 and Ctrl+Alt+3, respectively. If I want to talk about the famous Swedish scientist, Ångstrom, and his now-deprecated unit, ångstrom, I use Ctrl+Alt+Shift+w for the first letter of his name and Ctrl+Alt+w for the first letter of the unit. Best regards, Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Potts WFP Consulting Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stan Jakuba Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2008 09:46 To: U.S. Metric Association; SCC14 IEEE Subject: SI symbols typing Complementing the attachment "SI Writing Rules" I sent last week, I am forwarding the method for typing SI symbols via the Autocorrect feature of the MSWord. The method may look cumbersome, but after you set one of the shortcuts, repeating the procedure a dozen times for all the symbols you often use is a breeze and the benefit of the effort lasts forever. Not having tried the latest MSWord and Vista, I am curious to know whether those can be set up the same or an easier way or needs no setup at all. Stan Jakuba
