Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Non-Breaking Hyphen
In a world of numbers, we have many occasions where we do not want a series of numbers with hyphens to be split at the end of a line in Word. When hyphenation is turned on, this is what will automatically occur. There are even a few hyphenated words you might like to keep together. What numbers am I speaking about? How about telephone numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers, zip codes including the plus four digits, and others.

The solution is simple. Use a non-breaking hyphen instead of a hyphen. They look the same.

- is a Hyphen
‑ is a Non-Breaking Hyphen

So instead of pressing the hyphen, press Ctrl+Shift+hyphen When you toggle show/hide to display the formatting marks, the non-breaking hyphen will be twice as long as the normal hyphen. When it prints, it will be the same length.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Backing Up
It is frustrating to find your self at a browser window and not having a back button on the toolbar. You right-click hoping to see a Back option. There is a way... Alt+LeftArrow backs you up one screen in the browser. And as you might guess, Alt+RightArrow moves you forward one screen.
To the Desktop
Now here is a simple shortcut you can use all the time. The screen is filled with open windows and you need to find an icon which resides on the desktop. If you have the Quick Launch toolbar open, you might have an icon to clear the open windows by minimizing them all with one click. If that is not available to you, or even if it is, try the keyboard instead -- Win+D. All the open windows are minimized and you have access to the desktop. To open one of those closed windows, find the shortcut on the taskbar and click once. The window is restored.