Unselectable paragraph marker in the middle of text

[Purpendicular]

I have an unselectable what looks like a grey new paragraph marker in the middle of the text. Despite magnifying to the maximum degree, I cannot select it to get rid of it. If I cut out the whole paragraph where it is located, put it into Word, and paste it back, it seems I can remove it. I guess it is something obvious, but please assist. At the moment, it feels like an alien parasite in my document. I have no idea if it does anything, though; it does not seem like it.

[xiamenese]

I don't know if it comes as standard with NWP, but I have a "Zap Gremlins" macro, which might do it. Type "Gremlins" in the search box at the top of the help menu and it will locate it if it's on your machine. If not, look for it in the Macros forum.

HTH



Mark

[Þorvarður]

a grey new paragraph marker in the middle of the text. […] I guess it is something obvious, but please assist.

Could you please upload a screenshot?

[Purpendicular]

Here is a screenshot. The offending paragraph sign is on the third line after "for".

[Þorvarður]

The offending paragraph sign is on the third line after "for".

Thanks for the screenshot. I haven’t seen this before.

We may get pesky gremlins if we copy and paste from a PDF or a browser, or import stuff directly from other applications. The good thing is, however, in the past I have always been able to quickly get rid of such gremlins.

In your particular case,

1) Place the insertion point directly after the “r” (of the word ‘for’), press and hold down the Shift key and then press the right arrow key. This should select the gremlin, but you won’t see any selection on the screen!
Now execute the menu command “Copy to Find” from the Edit menu in order to get this alien character as search term into the Find & Replace box. Open the Find & Replace box. If we are lucky, it’s now already in the Find box, although we may not be able to see it. With the Replace box empty, click on ‘Replace All’ to remove all instances from the document.

2) If that doesn’t work, then simply copy and paste the whole document into a new empty Nisus document. Gremlins will not survive that action!

I take it for granted that you have already run the macro “Zap Gremlins” which Mark suggested 8 days ago. You should definitely let him know. He deserves a feedback from you.

If the problem persists, then please upload a part of your Nisus document where this alien character appears. I want to get to the bottom of this. :–)

[Purpendicular]

Thanks for the suggestions. Zap gremlins did not find anything.

When I pasted into a new document, the characters disappeared. Unfortunately, even though I used "Use pasted styles", my footnotes came out as British English, Times New Roman 12 pt, normal line spacing, instead of US English, Garamond 11 pt, 1.5 line spacing.

I can fix that, but as far as I know, returning the footnotes to US English can only be done one footnote at ta time. Also, the footnote reference is no longer a small superscript. Instead it is normal size, baseline, followed by a period. This I do not know how to fix automatically either.

I have an 87,000-word manuscript with 117 footnotes, so this is a pain.

Does anyone have suggestions?

[Þorvarður]

as far as I know, returning the footnotes to US English can only be done one footnote at ta time.

That wouldn’t be very Nisus-like.

Instead, place the insertion point in a footnote, press and hold down the Command key while you press “a” 4 times. This will select all footnotes in your document. Then, while the footnotes are selected, switch to the Style Sheet where you can easily restore your old settings.

[adryan]

G'day, Purpendicular et al

You can also use the Find & Replace dialog to select all the footnotes in a document.

Choose "Footnotes & Endnotes" in the "Where" field, choose a wildcard such as "Any" in the "Find what" field, and then "Find All". Then you can work on the Style Sheet as suggested by Þorvarður.

This method offers more nuanced control which may be useful in certain circumstances.

No doubt, even greater joy could be had by pressing the Macro Language into service.

Cheers,
Adrian

[phspaelti]

And another method is to place your selection at any place with the British English language attribute and then to choose "Select All in Language". This will select all those bits including the ones in the Footnotes.