Tuesday 11 July 2017

How to rectify two simple things in Word.

There are two things that I want to tell you today. they are things that annoy me somewhat when I come across them. the first is how to create superscripts and subscripts.
So often I read 25C or H2O They are both wrong. The Celcius scale is measured in degrees, a small raised 'o'  and the formula for water needs the dropped 2 or it means, if it means anything, one atom of hydrogen and two of oxygen Which is an impossibility anyway.



(Unfortunately, Blogger does not seem to recognise the super- and sub-scripts. I originally gace examples of the correct use, but Blogger has reverted them to the non-super and subscripts so I had to remove them. Pointless in saying it's wrong, then the 'corrected' version still has them wrong!)

This is a very simple thing to rectify. Simply click on ‘format’ on the toolbar and click on Font.
You will get the following window opening.








Check the superscript or subscript box, whichever you want and click OK. Then type what you want to be super- or subscripted. Go back to Format, then  Font and uncheck the box. Click OK and you’re ready to go.








The other thing that irritates me when reading is when there is an apostrophe at the beginning of a word. (such as ’till, an abbreviation of until) So often, this comes out as ‘till, which is. of course a quotation mark and not an apostrophe. What's more, it's a quotation mark with no closure.

In order to prevent this, I discovered a very simple way. You can fool Word into thinking it’s an apostrophe in the middle of a word by not pressing the space bar until after you’ve typed the two words.

EG. Wait here’till I arrive.

Then you simple go back and put in the space. Word will then keep the apostrophe the right way round.

Wait here ’till I arrive.

Both quite simple really, but are usually done wrongly, either because the writer knows no better, or through ignorance of the means to correct it.

No comments: