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How do I disable automatic hyphen correction in OS X 10.7?
When using the spell checker in Apple Mail it is always prompting to correct my hyphens to another one which is essentially similar but microns longer on the screen for some reason.
It's annoying as I often use hyphens and really need spell check too. Thoughts?
I looked in all the usual System Preferences places but can't find anything.
user167706
Posted 2012-10-25T16:18:05.650
Reputation: 41
Are you sure you're not using a third-party program to do this? Try creating a new user account to see whether the issue occurs there as well. – Daniel Beck – 2012-10-25T16:24:14.383
By "the usual System Prefs", did you mean to include Language & Text » Text » Use symbol and text substitution as well? By the way, in standard English, you normally don't use a hyphen except for separating syllables. Most of the time – like here – you'd use an en-dash, which is why the autocorrection does make sense. So, in the first revision of your question, you should have used the en-dash instead of the hyphen as well. – slhck – 2012-10-25T16:25:00.973
Have you unchecked Edit > Substitutions > Smart Dashes? @slhck It's more common to separate parts of sentences with em-dashes. There's dozens of other uses for normal hyphens as well. The PDF version of the Chicago Manual of Style uses two hyphen-minus characters in place of em-dashes and en-dashes. – Lri – 2012-10-26T15:25:36.417
Interesting, but that must be some kind of conversion thing (similar to how LaTeX uses three minus-hyphens to generate an em-dash), because they explicitly promote the use the em-dash. AFAIK most British publishers would use spaced en-dashes, whereas American would use closed em-dashes to set off parts of sentences, so you're correct in that regard. @lauri
– slhck – 2012-10-26T15:37:00.647