.. _a_typ:

*******************
Typographical Notes
*******************

novelWriter has some support for typographical symbols that are not usually easily available in many
text editors. This includes for instance the proper unicode quotation marks, dashes, ellipsis, thin
spaces, etc. All these symbols are available from the :guilabel:`Insert` menu, and via keyboard
shortcuts. See :ref:`a_ui_shortcuts_ins`.

This chapter provides some additional information on how novelWriter handles these symbols.


.. _a_typ_notes:

Special Notes on Symbols
========================

Some additional notes on these symbols.


Dashes and Ellipsis
-------------------

With the auto-replace feature enabled (see :ref:`a_ui_edit_auto`), multiple hyphens are converted
automatically to short and long dashes, and three dots to ellipsis. The last auto-replace can always
be reverted with the undo command :kbd:`Ctrl`:kbd:`Z`, reverting the text to what you typed before
the automatic replacement occurred.


Single and Double Quotes
------------------------

All the different quotation marks listed on the `Quotation Mark`_ Wikipedia page are available, and
can be selected as auto-replaced symbols for straight single and double quote key strokes. The
settings can be found in the :guilabel:`Preferences`.

Ordinarily, text wrapped in quotes are highlighted by the editor. This is meant as a convenience for
highlighting dialogue between characters. This feature can be disabled in the
:guilabel:`Preferences` if this feature isn't wanted.

The editor distinguishes between text wrapped in straight quotes and with the user-selected double
quote symbols. This is to help the writer recognise which parts of the text are not using the chosen
quote symbols. Two convenience functions in the :guilabel:`Format` menu can be used to re-format a
selected section of text with the correct quote symbols.

.. _Quotation Mark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark


Modifier Letter Apostrophes
---------------------------

The auto-replace feature will consider any right-facing single straight quote as a quote symbol,
even if it's intended as an apostrophe. This also includes the syntax highlighter, which may assume
the first following apostrophe is the closing symbol of a single quoted region of text.

To get around this, an alternative apostrophe is available. It is a special Unicode character that
is not categorised as punctuation, but as a modifier. It is usually renderred the same way as right
single quotation marks, but not always, depending on the font. There is a Wikipedia article for the
`Modifier letter apostrophe`_ with more details.

.. note::
   On export with the :guilabel:`Build Novel Project` tool, these apostrophes will be replaced
   automatically with the corresponding right hand quote symbols as is generally recommended.
   Therefore it doesn't really matter if you only use them to correct highlighting.

.. _Modifier letter apostrophe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modifier_letter_apostrophe


Special Space Symbols
---------------------

A few variations of the regular space character is supported. The correct typographical way to
separate a number from its unit is with a `thin space`_. It is usually 2/3 the width of a regular
space. For numbers and units, this should in addition be a non-breaking space, that is, the text
wrapping should not add a line break on this particular space.

A regular space can also be made into a non-breaking space.

All non-breaking spaces are highlighted with a differently coloured packground. The colour will
depend on the selected colour theme.

The thin and non-breaking spaces are converted to their corresponding HTML codes on export to HTML
format. For plain text, they are exported as regular spaces.

.. _thin space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_space
