Home | Tips | Library | Other Authors | Other WP Sites | Writer's Links | Contact | Site Map | Donate

Macros, tips, and templates for Corel® WordPerfect® for Windows®
© Copyright 1996-2012 by Barry MacDonnell. All Rights Reserved.

Here's a WordPerfect document (Dashes and slashes.wpd) describing several short macros that create typographical dashes and slashes, as well as accented letters and underlined tabs, that you can play with a keystroke or mouseclick. (Tip: You can assign macros to keys, toolbars, or menus. See here.) Underlined tabs are useful in creating lines above signatures, "fill in" lines, etc.

Instructions are given to add these macros to your own system.

Typographical dashes look better when printed than multiple hyphens, and with the addition of some hidden WordPerfect codes (see Hyphenation soft returns) -- already added to these macros -- they can be made to break more naturally at the end of lines instead of wrapping as a block of text to the next line.

For example, here is a narrow column of sample text where the second dash breaks the sentence, leaving a large white space next to the right margin:

Here is the same sentence using dashes created with the macros in DASHES.ZIP:

Note that WordPerfect 8 and later versions allow you to use QuickCorrect's QuickSymbols feature to create en- and em-dashes by typing either 2 or 3 hyphens consecutively. However, you may find these macros suit your needs better, and by assigning them to keys they are available as you type.

For more on the use of dashes and slashes (a/k/a slant or virgule):

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/dash.htm

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/slash.htm