hidden dashes?

sovre · 11-19-2011, 04:02 PM

I have scanned a few texts into RTF format. They look just fine when viewed in this format in Word, but if I try to use the document with some other software, I run into a problem. For example, say I copy the text into another text reading program: suddenly a huge number of words are shown as having dashes. Many of these look like normal short dashes, others I have never seen before--they look like "handle," because there is a small line extending vertically at the end of the dash.

My suspicion is somehow ABBYY is hiding these dashes from the scanned text when it is converted into an RTF file, but they are actually still there and so showing up when I try to work with the file in other contexts? Is there a way to prevent this from happening in my future scans and what would be the most convenient way to deal with the problem now?

Thanks for your help.

Jellby · 11-20-2011, 03:33 AM

They are probably "soft hyphens" which are a way of indicating places where it is possible to break a word across lines, but should be hidden otherwise. As you see, not all applications know how to deal with them, and I find they are generally overkill. I don't know if you can prevent FineReader from adding them, but I guess you can remove them with search and replace (but note that some of the hyphens should stay).

11-19-2011, 04:02 PM	#1
sovre Zealot Posts: 108 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: United States Device: iPad Mini; iPhone; Kindle Paperwhite (10th gen)	hidden dashes? I have scanned a few texts into RTF format. They look just fine when viewed in this format in Word, but if I try to use the document with some other software, I run into a problem. For example, say I copy the text into another text reading program: suddenly a huge number of words are shown as having dashes. Many of these look like normal short dashes, others I have never seen before--they look like "handle," because there is a small line extending vertically at the end of the dash. My suspicion is somehow ABBYY is hiding these dashes from the scanned text when it is converted into an RTF file, but they are actually still there and so showing up when I try to work with the file in other contexts? Is there a way to prevent this from happening in my future scans and what would be the most convenient way to deal with the problem now? Thanks for your help.

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11-20-2011, 03:33 AM	#2
Jellby frumious Bandersnatch Posts: 7,516 Karma: 18512745 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Spaniard in Sweden Device: Cybook Orizon, Kobo Aura	They are probably "soft hyphens" which are a way of indicating places where it is possible to break a word across lines, but should be hidden otherwise. As you see, not all applications know how to deal with them, and I find they are generally overkill. I don't know if you can prevent FineReader from adding them, but I guess you can remove them with search and replace (but note that some of the hyphens should stay).

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