Dear World,
Lately, if I run contractions together and omit apostrophes, it isnt because I dont know how to use them. Its because, sometimes, I just cant be bothered to track down a handy blog post or email which contains an apostrophe and from which I can copy/paste one.
Generally, if I am apostropheless, I am also in possession of a non-functional delete key, and its enough of a pain to use my mouse to highlight problems so that I can type over them without hunting down wild apostrophes.
Those of you who have used apostrophes in your emails, posts, and updates in the past months, and from which I have pillaged liberally: thank you for the punctuation.
(Sometimes they work, often they dont, and I havent gotten around to seeing if the keys reparable yet, which apparently means I can live without them. Astonishing.)
I know. Ive been complaining about this problem intermittently for months, but I still feel Wrong when I post/send/communicate without apostrophes. And so this is an almost-apology for those lapses.
Lately, if I run contractions together and omit apostrophes, it isnt because I dont know how to use them. Its because, sometimes, I just cant be bothered to track down a handy blog post or email which contains an apostrophe and from which I can copy/paste one.
Generally, if I am apostropheless, I am also in possession of a non-functional delete key, and its enough of a pain to use my mouse to highlight problems so that I can type over them without hunting down wild apostrophes.
Those of you who have used apostrophes in your emails, posts, and updates in the past months, and from which I have pillaged liberally: thank you for the punctuation.
(Sometimes they work, often they dont, and I havent gotten around to seeing if the keys reparable yet, which apparently means I can live without them. Astonishing.)
I know. Ive been complaining about this problem intermittently for months, but I still feel Wrong when I post/send/communicate without apostrophes. And so this is an almost-apology for those lapses.
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owlfish- S. Worthen
- S. Worthen
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Remapping keyboards is only useful if I can quickly switch back and forth. Ill investigate.
I don't remember how it is done but I should imagine setting it up is fairly painless.
' ' ' ' '
" " " " "
I have located “ and ‘.
I'm intrigued. They look like angled, not curly, quotation marks and apostrophes.(Actually, at a larger scale, they're clearly just curly.) Alas, one of them is on a key which isn't always functional either. I can usually live without right curly brackets, however, so this hasn't been as major an inconvenience as the absence of ' and " (and, indeed, the occasional painful absence of tab, which means I can't use command-tab to switch between programs).I would be more pro-active about fixing this situation if it were always a problem, but it's intermittent.
Edited at 2010-06-29 04:35 pm (UTC)
Control-H: backspace.
Control-?: delete (although exactly what this does is dependent on your terminal configuration).
Your terminal may also understand:
Control-W: delete previous word.
Control-U: delete current line from cursor leftwards.
However, as this is a Mac, most of my interactions are with the graphical interface.
For LiveJournal, you can post in HTML and use the character code ' for an apostrophe and " for double quotes. Like this: ' "
On Windows (at least in XP), there's an on-screen keyboard under Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Accessibility. This should do everything a normal keyboard does, including apostrophes and quotation marks.
I now have some alternatives using option-{ and option-}. They look like angled apostrophes and quotation marks, not curly ones. Hmm.
(Today, I am in my office with the external keyboard, so have all the usual punctuation handy.)
Anyway, there is a workaround (see below post) if you print of a chart with the ASCII codes on it.
p.s. this only works on Windows. Macs have their own shortcuts.
Hold down Alt.
Type the Unicode reference on the right hand keypad.
Release the Alt key.
ALT 0039 will give you the '
Granted, possessives are another problem.