hyphenation

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Yohanan
Posts: 91
Joined: 2017-12-21 04:36:37

hyphenation

Post by Yohanan »

Hi, I cannot hyphenate my documents, though I checked English and French are actually in the spelling file of the Library (as indicated by the manual of NW pro). It simply does not work, even where there is evidently too much stretch of the lines. I have selected the whole document, chosen the language (French right now), saved, then selected the automatic hyphenation (Normal and then More Often), but in vain until now. Any clue ?
adryan
Posts: 561
Joined: 2014-02-08 12:57:03
Location: Australia

Re: hyphenation

Post by adryan »

G’day, Yohanan et al

You also need to have hyphenation enabled in NWP Preferences:–

Nisus Writer Pro > Preferences > Languages > Hyphenation

From the drop-down menu there, choose something other than “Disable Automatic Hyphenation”.

Choosing the “Disable Automatic Hyphenation” option there does not transfer the tick to the “Disabled” command in the View > Hyphenation submenu, so it’s easy to get tricked into believing that hyphenation is still enabled when in fact it isn’t. This is probably because this submenu relates to a particular document, while the command in Preferences affects application behavior globally and so overrides settings for a particular document. In an ideal world, the submenu should have all the other commands greyed out in such a circumstance, but I for one don’t regard this as a high priority. :-)

You may also need to check whether the Format > Paragraph > Prevent Hyphenation command is ticked or not.

Personally, I prefer to do all my hyphenation manually.

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
Yohanan
Posts: 91
Joined: 2017-12-21 04:36:37

Re: hyphenation

Post by Yohanan »

Thanks a lot Adrian! It works and the problem was in the style for the paragraph with “Prevent Hyphenation”.
I am much interested in the MANUAL hyphenation because I have always practiced it this way. So, once you choose manual hyphenation, do you simply insert an hyphen where desired ?
adryan
Posts: 561
Joined: 2014-02-08 12:57:03
Location: Australia

Re: hyphenation

Post by adryan »

G’day, Yohanan et al

Glad that helped.

Yes, if you want to do hyphenation (at the end of a line) manually, just insert a hyphen where you want one in the first word of a line. Suppose we call the set of characters of the word to the left of, and including, the hyphen the “prefix”. You want this prefix to jump back up to the end of the preceding line. If it doesn’t, there is insufficient room in that line to accommodate it. There are ways to shoehorn it in, but it’s generally not worth the drama. So delete the hyphen and see whether a shorter prefix is possible.

Note that the “Prevent Hyphenation” command in the Format hierarchical menu will not override this manual hyphenation, so the command should really be named “Prevent Automatic Hyphenation”.

Manual hyphenation is not for everyone. It can be hard work. It requires a high level of language competency and/or a really good dictionary. And it is best left as one of the last things you do with a document before it is ready for publication, as it can be affected by such things as insertions, deletions, and changes to font, font size, kerning, ruler settings or document margins. (So there’s a few hints on shoehorning options!) You might like to do a Find on all hyphens in the document and examine them to make sure that any not occurring at the end of a line would really only be appropriate if they did occur at the end of a line.

I should emphasize that we are only talking here about end-of-line hyphenation. Hyphenation is a much broader topic than this.

One should be aware that Nisus Writer Pro offers a variety of related punctuation characters in the Dashes and Hyphens menu of the Special Characters Palette. However, this does not always operate as expected. For example, insertion of a hyphen from the Palette in a string of Palatino characters results in insertion of a Unicode glyph that is not part of the Palatino character set and is different from the hyphen character you get by using the keyboard (which is part of that font’s character set). Ideally, the Palette command would take into account such keyboard mapping for the font in use and deliver the expected character.

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
Yohanan
Posts: 91
Joined: 2017-12-21 04:36:37

Re: hyphenation

Post by Yohanan »

Thank you for this. I entered a few hyphens from the keyboard and I am a bit surprised by the fact that once this is done, the word is marked as incorrect orthography (red points underline), which in my view means that Nisus consider this as two separate words, or am I wrong? I coud not find the hyphen on the palette. Regarding French, I am rather confident in my knowledge of the principles governing hyphenation. At least in this French is a little bit simpler than in some other languages.
adryan
Posts: 561
Joined: 2014-02-08 12:57:03
Location: Australia

Re: hyphenation

Post by adryan »

G’day, Yohanan et al

First, your missing hyphen….

Window > Palettes > Show Palette Library > Writing

Drag the Special Characters Palette out of the right-hand pane of the Palette Library window. The Palette now becomes a floating window. If you drag and drop it into a convenient place in the Tooldrawer, it will lodge there (assuming it’s not already there).

This Special Characters Palette has a drop-down menu at the top. One of the menu items is titled “Dashes and Hyphens”. The Hyphen should appear in the list underneath, as described on Page 461 of the Nisus Writer Pro User Guide.

Next, you can’t just insert a hyphen anywhere and expect that a spell-checker will accept it as correct. I am not privy to the internal workings of Nisus’s dictionary-checking, but I did some quick experiments and it seems that a hyphenated word will only be deemed correct if the hyphen occurs between two syllables Nisus recognizes as such. As I understand it, Nisus uses whatever dictionaries you have authorized in your operating system. It’s conceivable that different dictionaries may syllabify the same word in different ways, and they may not accord with your own syllabification preference. Even so, the spell-checker can get it wrong, as you have discovered. It also passes “shoehorn-ing” as correct, even when it is all on the same line. I might add that I was surprised how slow the spell-checker was in operation.

I never use computer spell-checkers.

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
Yohanan
Posts: 91
Joined: 2017-12-21 04:36:37

Re: hyphenation

Post by Yohanan »

Thank you Adrian. I admire your self confidence in a right spelling. But maybe you are right and computer spelling just introduces the bad habit of being neglectful when writing. I remember an age when I was good in having the correct orthography, a long time ago. . .
adryan
Posts: 561
Joined: 2014-02-08 12:57:03
Location: Australia

Re: hyphenation

Post by adryan »

G’day, Yohanan et al

The thing is, if I’m unsure about a spelling, I consult a dictionary. (Fair warning: rant to follow.)

The trouble is, most people don’t even know when they should be consulting a dictionary. There’s a similar situation when it comes to grammar: people often don’t know when they’ve got it wrong(ly) in the first place.

A spell-checker might be useful for some people as a preliminary aid in detecting typos and other misspellings, but people often place too much faith in them and just leave it at that. Spell-checkers can deliver both false positives and false negatives, but few people consider the latter. I can often tell when a writer has relied on a spell-checker.

A spell-checker is a very poor copyeditor. But these days, it may be the only copyeditor people use. Few people read what they have written before disseminating it. Text messages, emails, whole books — who cares? This goes for major publishing houses as well. They just don’t bother reading stuff any more, especially if it emanates from an author with an established “reputation”. Just recently, I found spelling errors prominently displayed on the back covers of two books. How many people missed those errors? If the publisher can’t even get it right when they’re trying to part me from my money, why should I invest the time in reading the almost certainly flawed content between the covers? (But they’re cunning, those publishers: they don’t always flag their incompetence on the cover. I once got two-thirds of the way through a book, only to discover that slabs of text suddenly became typeset in a different font — not for any artistic reason, but because the fools of publishers hadn’t checked what was happening.) I despair!

Given that one should always read a document conscientiously all the way through anyway, even after using a spell-checker, one might just as well develop a sixth sense for knowing when to consult a dictionary or a grammar reference. Besides, a dictionary is way more fun than a spell-checker!

When you’re learning a foreign language, you frequently find yourself consulting a dictionary and/or a grammar reference. Many people would do well to recognize that, while they might be able to speak fluently in their mother tongue, they should regard it more as a foreign language when embarking on forays into the literary domain.

Returning to hyphenation, I consider this to be one area in which there is room for artistic licence or just plain preference. Many dictionaries would have “spellchecker” as an unhyphenated word, but I prefer to hyphenate it. It’s a question of House Rules….

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
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