Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's Microsoft Word - Dash-made lines

You know in Microsoft Word, where if you type ------ and press Enter, the dashes turn to an horizontal line across the page?

I've been having a problem with them. First of all, one has appeared in the end of my file and I can't delete it. Second, every time I try to insert one in order to separate two scenes, more than one lines appear. I can't delete one of them and leave one, though - I either have to leave it in dash form, or use more than one lines.

Any ideas to solve this?

Thanks,
AnnaBtG.

I know I've had this problem before. Not sure I recall the exact remedy for it, but here are a few things to check that might help:

Go to Tools -> AutoCorrect Options. Then click on the "AutoFortmat As You Type" tab. There, you can turn off the smart quotes, replacing -- hyphens with straight dashes (which might be a part of your problem). I *believe* your problem is most likely coming from "Border Lines" in the "Apply as you type" section. I know, for me, that turns my *** into a line of annoying blocks. You'll also want to check things on the "AutoFormat" tab as well.

Hope this helps!

Sara

My consistent advice for anyone using MS Word is -- turn OFF the auto-correct feature. Some people like it more than I do, but in my experience, it'll mess you up more often than not, and doesn't translate well to other formats.

Go to the Tools menu, then pick "AutoCorrect options." Choose the AutoFormat tab, and uncheck most of the boxes... especially the option that changes hyphens to dashes. That should do the trick.

****

For section-separators, I'd recommend a series of asterisks. Boring, perhaps, but time-tested. And MS Word has never messed with mine.

PJ

Pam, you've probably never typed enough stars... if you do have the auto-format option turned on lots of ******** turns into a heavy dashed line.

Doing what Sara says stops it happening.

I once had a major essay stress because of an errant line that appeared 1 hour before the deadline and would not disappear. My solution was to press return a lot to make it go on to a new page all by itself. I didn't hand that page in.

Anna, these are things I wished I'd known then. First, I hope you've already tried this, but just in case, have you put the cursor just before or just after the line and tried pressing delete/backspace?

If that doesn't work, try going into Format:Borders and Shading and make sure the None box is highlighted. You might have to try putting the cursor in lots of different places, and selecting random bits of nothingness with this option, because sometimes it's not obvious what the border is a border of.

And if that doesn't work, it might be that your stray line is actually a drawing object. Bring up the drawing toolbar (right-click on one of the other toolbars and select drawing), and then click on the arrow pointer button. Use this to draw a selection box around the line (make sure it includes the whole line), and see if that selects it. If it does, you can just press Delete to get rid of it.

If none of that works, I've run out of ideas...

I hope that makes sense, are you using a Greek version of MS Word? I'm not sure how different things are...

Helga

Well, I like most of the Auto-Correct features, so I haven't wanted to turn them off. I've certainly run into what Helga and Sara were saying about the line of blocks after *****. Usually what I've done is just put a space immediately following the asterisks before hitting the Enter key for the next line, and that does the trick. But I've now gone and turned off "Border Lines" - thanks for the information!

Kathy

I couldn't get the cursor below the line in the end of the text, Helga, and though it disappeared when I went before it and pressed Del it always reappeared when I pressed Enter again.

I had the Borders And Shading on None already, but I thought of Selecting All and clicking on None again, and, lo and behold, it disappeared! Yay!

Also, thanks for the tip on Border Lines, Sara. I thought there was a feature like this on but couldn't figure out which one it was

Thanks for the answers, girls!

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Helga, I probably turned off Auto-Correct before I typed much of anything That sort of thing drives me nuts. Grammar check, too. Spell check can be useful, but the grammar check is so not helpful.

Heh, that works. Or you could try Control-Enter; that forces a new page.

PJ