Basic Formatting - Punctuation

[John K 0]

I have 2 questions about punctuation and formatting that seem to be very basic, but have me stumped.

 

1. How can I insert a force page instruction into a memo or tag, so that everything that follows prints on a new page?

 

2. Is there a way to get rid of the final comma after place names?

I have: [P] was born <[D]><[L]><[M]>

L = Northfield, Massachusetts

M = (the first child born there)

The result is: "He was born at Northfield, Massachusetts, (the first child born there)."

The comma after Massachusetts is obviously not necessary.

Here are some items that seem strange to me:

No comma appears after Massachusetts when I look at the sentence preview, but it does appear in the Journal Report.

No comma appears in the Journal Report if L = Massachusetts (with no City).

[Terry Reigel 0]

John,

 

1. You add a paragraph break by adding Carriage Return code - [:CR:] - which you can either type in or insert from the right-click menus in the Memo or Sentence fields. If you want the new paragraph indented to match the Journal style, then add a Tab code - [:TAB:] - again by typing or by the right-click.

 

If you want it in the midst of the output for a tag, just insert the code(s) in the Memo or Sentence where you want it. If you want the output for the next Tag to be in a new paragraph, place the code(s) as the first item of that Tag. If you place them as the last item of a Tag the source note reference number and closing period will appear at the beginning of the new line.

 

2. I believe the comma comes from the Place Style. Someone who uses Place Styles could better answer it. My thought is you can either create a custom place style (not all that simple) or reword the sentence so it works without changing the comma.

[John K 0]

Terry,

 

Thank you.

 

Force Page. While I can insert carriage returns and tabs in the manner you describe, what I am trying to do is insert a "force page" code - so that everything after the code will print on an entirely new page (like a new chapter in a book). None of the codes that show up when I right click in the memo field provide this as an option, and I have not been able to come up with an alternative approach that works.

 

Extra Commas. You are correct that in many cases the problem of the additional comma can be worked around by a clever reorganization of the sentence. However, I have not always been clever enough! After reading your comment, I thought that perhaps I could fix the problem my creating a new Place Style. The U.S. Standard Place Style prints: "<[City], ><[County], ><[state], ><[Country], >" So, I created a new style with the template: "<[City]><, [County]><, [state]><, [Country]>" However, even with this style, I still wind up with "He was born at Northfield, Massachusetts, (the first child born there)." Therefore, the trailing comma is coming from somewhere else in TMG other than place styles. I have not done a careful study, but it does appear that in most of my sentences I would want to retain a comma after the state name. However, it would be nice to be able to turn it off occasionally (it would also be nice to see it on the sentence preview).

[Terry Reigel 0]

Sorry, John, I missed that you meant page break rather than line break. I don't know of a way to force a page break from within TMG.

 

I'm afraid I don't know enough about styles to help - I'd have thought what you did would work. Is it possible your new style wasn't actually used for some reason?

[Michael Hannah 0]

I don't know the exact rules that TMG uses, but my experience has been that if multiple place elements are output for then a trailing comma will be output unless it is clear to TMG that the location variable ends a sentence. That would be consistent with your not getting one for just "Massachusetts" but did get one for "Northfield, Massachusetts". I vaguely remember someone commenting that this was "proper" punctuation rules for a multi-part location, but I couldn't swear to that.

[Paul Lawrence 0]

I don't know the exact rules that TMG uses, but my experience has been that if multiple place elements are output for <[L]> then a trailing comma will be output unless it is clear to TMG that the location variable ends a sentence. That would be consistent with your not getting one for just "Massachusetts" but did get one for "Northfield, Massachusetts". I vaguely remember someone commenting that this was "proper" punctuation rules for a multi-part location, but I couldn't swear to that.

 

You are right, I believe it is the standard in most style manuals...

[Michael Hannah 0]

John,

 

As for the page break, I believe the internal code used for a page break differs depending upon the word processor. However, most word processors have a global search and replace where you could search for some unique text string you have inserted in the output (e.g. 'xxPGxx') and replace that text with a page break. I think this is the simplest way to accomplish what you are seeking.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

[John K 0]

Thank you Paul and Michael,

 

That explains the rationale for what TMG is programed the way it is - but it does not explain why the Sentence preview is programed differently and does not show the trailing comma. (A fact that I did not realize until after I had manually added a number of commas to the memo field for tags where I wanted a comma after the final piece of a multi-part location. Now that I am printing reports, I am finding a lot of double commas that I have to fix.) Perhaps the trailing comma is not shown in some non-Journal reports.

 

Do I correctly assume that there is no way to eliminate the trailing comma in a particular case? (I guess I could change the place name to a single entry and put "Northfield, Massachusetts" in either the City or the State field, but this would lead to other problems.) I take it there is nothing comparable to [:NP:] that will work for commas in the middle of a sentence.

 

Michael, I thought of your idea of inserting "xxPGxx" in memo fields whenever I wanted a page break, and then doing a global search and replace after the information is transferred to a word processing program. However, I have not been able to get WordPerfect to insert a page break as part of a find and replace operation. I can get it to insert carriage returns, indents, tabs, and many other instructions, but not a page break. Does anyone know how to do this?

[NeilMcD 0]

Michael, I thought of your idea of inserting "xxPGxx" in memo fields whenever I wanted a page break, and then doing a global search and replace after the information is transferred to a word processing program. However, I have not been able to get WordPerfect to insert a page break as part of a find and replace operation. I can get it to insert carriage returns, indents, tabs, and many other instructions, but not a page break. Does anyone know how to do this?

 

John

 

WP Menu item: Edit/Find and Replace

Put your dummy string xxPGxx in the top box.

Tab to the lower box.

Menu item: Replace/Codes

About half way down the alphabetical list (some are greyed out) is the code HPg

Select and click Insert (or Insert & Close)

The [HPg] code appears in the lower box

Click Replace All

 

Note - it does not work if you type [HPg] into the lower box.

 

I am using WP X3, but I assume this works with previous versions too.

 

Neil

[John K 0]

Neil,

 

Thank you. That works great.

[Michael Hannah 0]

Do I correctly assume that there is no way to eliminate the trailing comma in a particular case?

I have never found a way to eliminate this trailing comma. Maybe some other user has stumbled upon a way, but I don't know of one. Again, this might require some kind of place style that adds some identifiable text, maybe to produce "Northfield, Massachusetts xxxCOMMAxxx," and then do another global search a replace. At least with TMG it outputs word processing files and you can post process the results.