I was listenting to a CD of the BBC lectures that formed the basis for "Eats, Shoots and Leaves". The hyphen section included the statement that hyphens may be inserted where not grammatically required if they are needed to prevent possible confusion. That day our local paper quoted a statement by an "anti-child sexual exploitation group"
Do you think I should send the editor a copy of the CD?

http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.php?...true#Post159250

Which brings up a question not relating to hyphens.
Why is it that sometimes when you copy a url it
comes out in blue and underlined, so all you have
to do is click on it; but sometimes it doesn't, as above

Edited to add some returns per eta and con.
I hope this solves the problem, but frankly I don't know what I'm doing

Dale, please note that your long url has made the screen
"go wide"; i.e., there is a scroll bar along the bottom and
one has to scroll over to see the reply button. All of the
preceding and
follow-up messages will also be in this wide format unless
entry is done with forced returns, like I've done here.

this is the reason folks use free services such as
tinyurl.com or shorl.com

to answer your question, I think this is site dependent.
here, for example, you have to use the URL UBB Code, just
like you do to Bold or Italicize text.

and even better, there is no need to use tinyurl or anything, just put the link within the "url" tag.

[ url=httpsomething or other]words here[/ url]

and leave out the spaces.

like this: FAQ

but that's what tsuwm was trying to get at...

tsu, eta: Thank you for that. I had long wondered how it was done

So I'll try it:

<a href="wordsmith.org/board/showflat.php?
Cat=0&Board=wordplay&Number=159250&Searchpage
=1&Main=159250&Words=purple+people+dalehileman&topic
=&Search=true#Post159250" target="_blank">here it is</a>

Well, it seems to have worked, except that clicking on it
yields a "Not found" message.
I'll keep working on it, and if I'm lucky, in about 10
more years I'll have mastered the technique.

Then I'll be 85

Edited to remark that after I added the above
concluding paragraph,
all my work had been in vain, because it caused
the entire URL to reappear, as you can see.
Maybe it will take more than 10 years after all

Why does Bill Gates torment us so

Edited to add returns at arbitrary points so
that the subsequent text doesn't run off the page.


Edited once more to add returns in the above editing
remark (as well as this one).

re: Why does Bill Gates torment us so

did you see this quote? Jackie thought it important enough to start a thread about it.
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=163966

if you don't want to get stepped on, stop lying down on the floor and acting like a door mat.

the choice is yours.

Dale, your first problem is that the link you're posting doesn't start with h-t-t-p-:-/-/ which is what the UBB software is looking for to do that "automatic blue" underlining. http://D'oh!

Second, the UBB software wants UBB Code in your posts rather than HTML which is why your HTML Anchor tag didn't work. When in Rome...

dale, you used < > rather than [ ] and use url rather than a href.

BUT eta, its all bill gates fault.

its not that dale has failed to read the FAQ,
Nor is it that dale has failed to reference the pages and pages
of instruction that have been type up (by various members) and
saved by max (on a server he pays for, and share for FREE) and
that Jackie has 'nailed down' the thread with all the links,
making it easy to find--
Its not that he has even failed to read the directions you posted
(and instead, when off and used HTML, rather than UBB code)

and that he has ignored the gentle hint that his broken link
has made the page go wide.


NO, its all bill gate's fault.

dale is the poor, long suffering target of abuse.

yeah, right, and by the way, there is this bridge i know abuout
for sale... just send me an email, and i'll tell you all about it..
just put a small toll booth at either end, and you can be raking in the riches..

My twisted sense of humor is often misinterpreted

Myr: Thank you for that tip. I get confused because sometimes you need the http:// and sometimes you don't

eta: I am sure you're right and will endeavor to keep this all in mind but at my advanced age, non-geek status, and being a relative beginner in the PC realm, I can't guarantee I won't mess up again

dale, ok, but how bout you go up there and edit your post to fix it?

Edit both posts while you're at it, Dale.

I have asked Zed to consider starting
a new thread with this topic. It isn't
fair that somebody else has made us all
have to scroll back and forth, so that
we're too distracted/irritated to feel
like responding to her interesting post.

funny how up-and-down scolling is ok, but sideways ain't...

Yeah, but, what? -- 99%, prolly, of the posts
here can be read in their entireties, without
having to scroll down to finish them. I'd say
it's not so much the scrolling itself, as the
interruption necessitated by side-to-side.

good point.

though on my 20" screen, and the resolution I'm using, I rarely have to...

eta: pppppphhhhhbbbbbbtttttt!

Myr: You're right about the http business
and so I edited my thread to include it.
The reason I left it out in the first place
was that when you email someone a link,
you can't have it because then it won't
get underlined and turn blue.

I've spent the entire morning adding returns
in my followups, at arbitrary points, in order
To prevent the subsequent followups from running
off the page.

In about 20 years when I am 96 I will have
learned all the pertinent rules and won't
be such a burden on you guys

Thank you all for your patience, except You-Know-Who

DALE:

post removed

eta: Well, I did so, or I think I did,
though it was a pretty tedious process,
and I apparently was successful except
in the case of one followup,
yours immediately above

One would wonder, in
this day and age when sending rockets to
the moon got to be so easy that we quit
doing it, that a function of this sort
couldn't be automatic (I think they call
it an "algorithm")

PS: After adding all the returns, it took me
98 clicks of the Back arrow (in green circle)with
74 repeats of the "Warning: Page has Expired" to
get back to the main forums list

Apologies to Father Steve

well, I'm not sure what you did, but at least the screen isn't widey anymore...

eta: What I did, as mentioned above, was to go through the entire forum, followup by followup, inserting returns at arbitrary points in order to curtail the longer lines.

As I mentioned on the previous page, in a time when checking the spelling in an entire file of many thousand words then transmitting to a recipient clear off in Australia; or programming an airborne missle to strike a distant target within a few inches; occupies only milliseconds...

...that keeping the length of a line within the window couldn't be done automatically, by means of what I think they call "software"

My abject apologies to haters of persiflage

ok. thanks for the effort dale.

did you know there's a "Main Index" link near the top center of the page? saves a lot of clicking.

Thank you eta, you're indeed a very patient fellow and I commend you

I have run across one other blogger with an equal degree of tact and forbearance, on a board which protocol forbids me to mention, but his name is Phil and he lives in Germany

...while I am dalehileman@verizon.net

Thank you also for the tip on the links at the top. I know about them, but Bill Gates has a trick up his sleeve to discourage you from using them. When you use a link to the forum list, Bill deletes the highlighting on the forum you were using...

...so if you're an old fart like me you will have forgotten, and will have to laboriously open each forum to figure out where you were

So I'll do the 98 clicks. Usually it doesn't take that long

keeping the length of a line within the window couldn't be done automatically It IS done automatically for internet addresses, when you click on the URL button under Instant UBB Code. * **

*These are only visible when you hit the Reply button on a post; they are not visible if you just go to the Quick Reply box at the bottom of the page...until and unless you hit the Preview button.

**When I click on the URL button, I, at least, get a little box that already has an http:// in it; and I have to remember to delete that if I want my link to work. I assume (ouch) that everyone's works that way...?

yes, you get an http:// in the entry box when you click on URL; but (at least in Firefox) it is selected (highlighted) and if you have copied a link you want to use you simply paste it into the box and you, in effect, overwrite the http:// that's there.

or, there's no need to remember to delete it if you consistently copy and paste your links in this way.

Tsuwmn, mea culpa, i have a head like a sieve, (or perhaps its like a colander) and once again, i have forgotten a rhetorical term.
–it’s the one for the process of saying or referring to thing, by "not referring" to them--as in "far be it from me to mention my opponent’s sexual escapades" (and so remind every one of the time the opponent was caught in an embarrassing position)

i've noticed its use here has increased, with the phrase
on a board which protocol forbids me to mention popping up in several threads of late.

i've noticed it partly because forbids--that word sticks me like a pin. i don't think things are forbidden here. (we ain't go no stinken rules) it's just, many behaviors, are generally agreed on, for a variety of reasons, to be, our norm.

Of course any one can learn our general accepted behaviors, and generally behave the same way, or they can ask us to change our behaviors.(or they can even flaunt or general rules--but there are consiquences, eventually)

have we changed? in the years i have posted here, i must say yes--in some parts i am sad about the changes, (we are more professional, less open and friendly) and will we continue to change--most definately! but what i don't think will change is: we don't change on demand, but as a slow evalution.

I just discovered this--thank you! I really owe you a lot, you know that?

Helen, you're right: we ARE much less friendly and open than we used to be. Sigh; 2002 cost us trust that we will never again have. But we'd have probably had enough spoilers since then to have changed us anyway. But MAN, that first year-and-a-half were great, weren't they?
Sorry--I can't think of the word you're looking for, either.

apophasis
a figure of speech which alludes to something specific by denying that it will be mentioned
(e.g., "I won't mention the fact that Representative Smith has been supporting three children from adulterous relationships.") [compare paraleipsis]

but I always like to include this calming advice when providing these: "The subtle distinction between two terms [of rhetoric] is completely irrelevant."