For everybody - thanks to Bill, the sentence now reads "........ such as the character u that shows as μ ......" I appreciate any such suggestions.
Concerning the selection of the substitutes that avoids the unwanted autocorrections, there seems to be enough single letters in English that never stand alone such as the u, or short combinations such as the r. to minimize that potential problem. Again, it is just one among many ways how to speed up one's typing. Stan Jakuba ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Potts To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: 08 Jul 22, Tuesday 15:29 Subject: [USMA:41477] RE: Fw: RE: SI symbols typing Stan: The misunderstanding arose because you didn't use quotes to distinguish the four other examples in the same sentence. I would have added a note to that effect, but thought it was something you'd realize from my comment. (And don't forget that om is a monotonous Buddhist chant -- sounded as ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... ). As for converting a u (rather than, for example, something like -mu- or -m-) to µ, my personal preference is to avoid automatic substitutions on single letters. I'm perfectly happy, though, if others disagree about that. In the meantime, I continue to use Ctrl+Alt+m. Incidentally, I've removed the parenthetical c from my own auto-correct list. It's annoying, when I really want a parenthetical c, to have it converted to the copyright symbol ©, which I get (when I actually want it) by typing Ctrl+Alt+c. I don't need to try the shortcuts. As a professional writer (and MS Word user since its introduction), I'm already familiar with the process -- hence the examples I gave. 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: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 05:48 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:41470] Fw: RE: SI symbols typing Bill: Apparently you did not try the procedure. It would have been obvious then that the quotes were intended to distinguish the u from the other text only. Nevertheless, if you got confused, I will take the quotes out in the next sending a few years from now. Hopefully that move will not generate an opposite reaction Stan PS: You have a good eye. Thousands had seen the text and noone pointed this out. Will you try the method now? Do it. It will save time. ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Potts To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: 08 Jul 21, Monday 11:27 Subject: [USMA:41465] RE: SI symbols typing Stan: I was referring to the following sentence: The shorthand is an easily-remembered substitute such as "u" that should change to μ; r. to · (raised dot); om to Ω; Nm to N·m; d to ° (degree). You appear to be suggesting that one type a u in quotes ("u") in order to get a mu (µ). It's quicker to put it between hyphens (-u-), as that doesn't involve using the shift key. Bill -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Potts WFP Consulting Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stan Jakuba Sent: Monday, July 21, 2008 04:16 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:41460] RE: SI symbols typing 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
