I apologise that I might be duplicating a thread - I'm sure there was one on this subject looking for suggestions as to exceptions (like BBC etc) but I can't find it anywhere (even in Mods).

I quite often use an ellipsis (three dots/periods in a row) and noticed that these are restricted. Are there circumstances in which these are misused?

Thanks,

Rich

Been meaning to mention this in PM to MM for ages but the one that really bugs me is not being able to use ' - ' (space - hyphen - space) in titles or scene desciptions - though it can be used in forum posts.

Whenever anyone does ' - ' it gets auto-changed to '--' (two hyphens, no space either side), which totally changes (in fact reverses) the meaning. Space hyphen space means "longer pause than a comma" whereas nospace dash dash nospace means "run the words together at maximum speed".

A while back someone posted a subject line that was something like:

"Watch Jane in the Mud - Free video!"
UMD auto-changed it to
"Watch Jane in the Mud--Free video!"

Now to me the first version reads as, "Watch Jane in the Mud" (pause) "Free video!"
But by removing the spaces and switching to --, I now read it as:
"Watch Jane in the mud-free video!" (i.e. there is no mud at all in the film) - which is the total opposite of what's intended. The person who posted the subject line mentioned eveidently read it the same way I do as they subsequently editied it and re-worded to avoid the dash entirely.

You can work round it by using colons instead: "Watch Jane in the Mud: Free video!" but given ' - ' is used everywhere in casual speech (technically it's not advised in formal use) it's annoying when you forget and then have ro re-edit everything back to read how you meant it to.

I wonder if it's a difference between US and UK English? Is ' - ' not a thing in the States?

Btw the original thread on capitalisation was here: https://umd.net/forums/anti-capitalisation-filter-strings-that

UK and American standard grammar are definitely close but not quite the same. At all. And I don't know what language they're all speaking in Oz - I need an interpreter lol.

I like to use the em-dash which translates as the '--' on here, but is often the longer one on word processors to join two phrases together where the other would be a fragment and not make sense on its own, but doesn't call for a semi-colon or long pause like DM1 said. Usually I attach the words--like this. It adds visual space, too in otherwise dense text. I may also overuse them.

However in the example of 'Title - free viddy!' the space seems necessary as it makes it extra clear that they are two different phrases saying two different things and not a hyphenated word or something to rush over. Are colons all that bad, or do they look more like subtitles to the main title? Like 'Colons: And How Not to Confuse Them with That Other Type of Colon' hehehe

I'm no pro at this, but I like writing stuff. Especially horny stuff.

I have an all-caps filter that is meant to prevent ALL-CAPS spam, but I also have a whitelist. I'm always adding words to the whitelist, and BBC was not on there, so I've added it. UMD should leave that word alone for you going forward. Anyone can contact me directly (or use the Contact Us page) if they have any more suggestions because they're super-easy to put in.

I also run various texts through a rudimentary grammar checker which just prevents me from having to constantly edit some of the common things that people do in their descriptions, like putting 10 dots instead of 3 or 4 for their ellipsis, or using a single dash when it's not even a hyphenated word, meaning they really meant use a double dash or an em-dash.


I'm more lenient in the forum posts, but for scene descriptions I try to present them a bit more consistently overall for a better shopping experience.


Never heard of that one The long dash, far as I understand it, points to the following phrase as being a sort of explanation or clarification of what preceded it. Naturally it should have the same pause and inflection as a colon, like you said. It can also be a substitute for making the phrase parenthetical.


Having the single dash flip its meaning to the opposite thing based on whether it's flanked by spaces is way more confusing to me. A single dash or hyphen is pretty much always used to join words together, but like you said, I don't know if it's a regional thing. Thoughts anybody else?

I do think I'll consider replacing ' - ' with ': '

Regex.... don't bring back my nightmares about regex


Funnily enough I learnt this the other day, in English there is a very subtle difference between a short and a long dash, think when Microsoft Word autocorrects it seemingly pointlessly when you add a space.

A short (en) dash is used to concat words, e.g. "Pages 12-13" or "Mess-Master"

A long (em) dash is used to separate phrases, e.g. "He ate the cream pie - or rather, he wore the cream pie"

(More info: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/dash/)

I feel slightly sick every time I have to put a big regex together


That's what I was taught. A dash connects words, and a long dash connects phrases--usually with the second phrase elaborating on the first.

Ok. Thanks. But the editor still won't let me use an ellipsis. It disappears as soon as I hit save. I notice others are able to use them though. Is there a work around code?

That might happen if your browser uses a weird character for the ellipsis instead of dots. UMD removes those. Can you be sure that it's not automatically converting your dots to something else? This also happens a lot when people paste from a word processor.

Hmm. Still no joy. It's the same character I use as a full stop/period...

I'm on an iPhone 13 Pro (version 15.2.1) I mostly use Firefox but I've just tried it on Chrome and Safari and it's the same story. Once I hit save any grouped periods disappear.

Edit: It's possibly an iPhone thing.

I just edited your message and added the "..." character. When I enter... it seems to stick... I think you might be right that it's an iPhone thing.... I'll try to get to the bottom of it tho....

Here's what I like about UMD:

Conversations about grammmer.

Thanks MM

Rich

MM,
can you please add MMC to the allowed list of consecutive capitalized letters? I was not aware this was a topic up for discussion until just now but we have been using that abv. for our store for a while now and just accepted the fact that UMD did that with the letter case.

Thank you

I love regexes, and text manipulation in general, one of the joys of working on Unix/Perl systems. I guess this makes me even odder than being a wammer?


Yes, but the long dash needs space around it to read correctly. I read your line above as:

"A dash connects words, and a long dash connects (pause) phrasesusually with the second phrase elaborating on the first."

I think it's a difference between reading on screen, and reading text on paper. My preference would be for people to be able to just use "space hyphen space" as they typed it, but if it has to be forced to double, can we please keep the spaces either side? "phrases -- usually" instead of "phrases--usually"?

The actual HTML for the em-dash is "ampersand mdash semicolon" which should produce a single long one instead of two hyphens.


Using abreviations may not be a good idea, some years back the people running the London Splosh Games took to abreviating it to LSG in threads, but as no-one knew what LSG actually stood for, that may have contributed to the lower turnout for the second event, which then killed the whole thing off. Unless there's a real need to save characters, usually better to spell things out in full.

Sure, no problem


The pause would come between "phrases" and "usually," where the double dash is. A short dash would have no pause because it connects two otherwise distinct words into one.


I'm sorry, no I just had an idea: Think of the long dash as having an arrow on the right side. So it would look like "A dash connects words, and a long dash connects phrases-->usually with the second phrase elaborating on the first."


That's similar to the conversion that word processors do. I prefer to use the double-dash as the standard substitute for the em-dash because it's easier to type in and store. I'll still consider converting double-dash to em dash on display tho.

That would be true if there were spaces each side. No spaces, no pause, instead connect words together. What '-' means and what ' - ' means are opposites.


Again, only works for me with space each side.
Btw, Associated Press's style guide says to use spaces either side of dashes for readability (with particular reference to newspaper printing), so I don't think I'm alone in this.

But, OK, you're clearly not going to budge on it, at least having had this thread it'll no longer be rattling around in my head, and every time I see it mangle someone else's content I can just gloat about people who never proof-read their posts, instead of getting frustrated about it.


That would look neater, at least. I remember when we could use far more HTML in posts and format things nicely, though I guess anti-hacking concerns have put paid to most of that.

ampersand larr semicolon - gives a left-pointing arrow
ampersand rarr semicolon - gives a right pointing arrow

Any chance of enabling the Euro currency symbol? And if not already allowed, the Japanese Yen one? That with the existing dollar and pound should cover the majority of currencies WAM material is sold in.

ampersand euro semicolon - Euro symbol
ampersand yen semicolon - Japanese Yen

Not for me, because the latter doesn't exist


No, but apparently they are. Just looked that up and that is what their style guide recommends for legibility in print formats. We'll keep 'em tight tho. (See what I did there?)


Actually the HTML is restricted mostly to cut out some of the extra-spammy things that people do. If you have a tag that you'd like to suggest adding to the whitelist, lemme know. Javascript is the one big no-no.


Oh no! I hope it's not actually mangling any content, or else I have some work to do.


I never thought of that; Thanks for the suggestion. But I feel like that might be confusing to some customers, even with a currency sign clearly visible. Maybe we should keep it consistent across that board.