em dash missing?

[dankreider]

I've always used ALT+0151 to create an em dash when entering lyrics. Just got a new laptop and installed Finale, everything works great, but...

my em dash is missing. ALT+0151 doesn't work. Other ALT's work, like ALT+0146 for a curly apostrophe.

Anyone know what's going on?? Very strange.

[dankreider]

PS - ALT+0151 doesn't work in MS Word either. It returns a strange box with a question mark inside it. And that's for Calibri, not a strange font. Other ALT combinations work just fine.

I had to force Word to automatically create an em dash, then copy and paste it into Finale lyrics.

I can see the em dash in the Windows Character Map, and it tells me it should be ALT+0151. But it just doesn't work.

[Michel R E]

have you tried Alt+0214?

this is the code I see for specifically the Calibri font's em-dash.

[motet]

214 is a capital O-umlaut in most of my fonts (including Calibri). Ö

[miker]

Would an en dash work? You could access that by inserting Finale’s “hard hyphen.”

[motet]

I assume, dankreider, that you've tried rebooting?

[dankreider]

Thanks for the replies, all.

motet: I have tried rebooting, to no avail.

miker: an en dash isn't sufficient, unfortunately. I'd apologize here for being a typesetting nerd, but... haha

...and alt+0214 does indeed yield the capital O-umlaut.

Still open to ideas. I'm flummoxed, and rather inconvenienced.

Thanks!
Dan

[motet]

I use something called WinCompose, <https://github.com/SamHocevar/wincompose>, which is freeware and most excellent.

It runs in the system tray, and lets you press a "compose key" of your choice (e.g. the Alt button to the right of the spacebar, the Windows key next to that, the "menu" key next to that, etc.) followed by a mnemonic key sequence to get the odd characters. For an em dash, you'd press the compose key followed by three dashes: —. To get è your press the compose key followed by ` e. For ß, you'd type the compose key followed by s s. © is o c. And so on. There are hundreds of these defined, and you can add your own if you want (you could make em dash be <compose> m -, for example). Includes Unicode. Much easier and quicker than memorizing Alt+ numbers or looking though a menu to choose the character.

[miker]

What font are you using? (I guess we should have asked that, first.)

You might try downloading the demo of PopChars for Windows. http://www.ergonis.com/products/popcharwin/

See if the em dash is available that way.

Motet's WinCompose looks pretty interesting, too.

[motet]

The em dash code is standard across most text fonts. PopChar seems useful for oddball fonts like Maestro but for standard characters like em dash or things you use repeatedly, WinCompose is I think quicker.

I found something called MainType for browsing through oddball fonts that lets you put things into the clipboard, but that's an extra step over PopChar.

[motet]

Read through http://www.finaleforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15427 for my experiences with PopChar on Windows.

[dankreider]

@miker, I'm using Minion Pro. Never had a problem with it before. But NO font choice is allowing me to use alt+0151, even our old friend Times New Roman. It's like the key combo is gone. Color me baffled.

@motet, I'm going to check out WinCompose. Always looking for ways to streamline my workflow. Thanks!

Dan

[motet]

Is it a Windows 10 issue? Does it work for anyone else on a Windows 10? (Works for me with Windows 7.)

[dankreider]

@motet: I've been on Windows 10 for a couple years now. The em dash worked fine on Windows 10 before.

[Michel R E]

I use something called WinCompose, <https://github.com/SamHocevar/wincompose>, which is freeware and most excellent.

Thank-you so much for this recommendation. It's brilliant!!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(hehehe love making that emote with 3 keystrokes, although I hadn't at first noticed that it is by default missing the character's right arm)

[BuonTempi]

Bear in mind that Finale's Edit Preference "Substitute Font for Missing Unicode Characters" may affect things. In short, if the font you're using doesn't contain the char you want, Finale will change the char to something that is in the font. E.g., if you don't have š, then it will just do s.

The name of the pref is misleading, as it doesn't change the font to something else, but changes the character. That's why fonts without a secondary hyphen glyph use a dash as a Soft Hyphen.