When I'm putting fic online, I make sure to use the -- (with spaces) because different people's systems convert the em dash differently. Though maybe people aren't copying fic off websites as often as I do. Fancy formatting turns into weird symbols in my tablet, I have a whole collection of macros I run to convert files into plain text. No curly quotes for me.

I'm volunteer-tutoring at my local high school, and one of the things that the counselor was most enthusiastic about was me helping the college applicants. Not just helping them with essays, but evidently the computer skills needed to upload transcripts, scan pictures and so on are a big time-sink for staff and students.

A reminder to me that not every student comes from a household with a computer....

Sports Night, an oral history: [link]

I called in sick today, but I thought I would log in remotely and take care of these two things that I knew had to get done today and ought to have been easy. Well, one was in fact easy. I'm at the point where the other one can just fuck off. I tried handing it off to someone else, maybe they can take care of it...

oh, msbelle, what a pita. Companies assuming everyone is completely familiar and comfortable with computers now and doing everything online is easier and faster is such a mistake.

Me asking for complete detailed instructions for a procedure I'm not familiar with, and getting instructions that include doing things that are not even an option in the online menu -- that's reason for cursing, right? I can't even guess what she means, and she's gone. It's noon and I've done not a single bit of my own work. Fvck it, I'm going to lunch.

The person who handles most of our benefits, when I've had a question in the past, will say, "oh you just do such and such" ... not realizeing that she can do it because she has administrative access, but none of the rest of us can. Maddening.

And let me chime in - late - with a vote for spaces before and after a dash. It means that if the word + dash + next word come at the end of a line you don't end up with the whole thing going to the next line (since systems will treat the combination as one long word).

and doing everything online is easier and faster is such a mistake.

I work for the govt and they require an epic amount of 'training' and I can't tell you how often the answer on how to find a course is to, "Google it."

I had to watch, read and click along to an hourlong course that informed me it was unsafe to ride my motorcycle without a helmet. One, I know. Two, the govt says it's people are required to wear a helmet regardless of state law so I'm not sure why everyone needs a whole training on the matter. Three, took me twenty minutes to find the damn course.

Excellent use of my time, I tell you.

I had about two hours of training on how to recognize signs of child abuse, and what my legal responsibilities are to report it, and exactly which university officials have what different responsibilities. I do not work with children.

No spaces around m-dashes!

Sophia, keyboard shortcut in Word is ctrl+alt and the number pad (10-key? What's it called?) dash.

IEEE style neither requires nor forbids spaces around emdashes, requiring only that their use must be consist within the article. Personally, I prefer emdashes without spaces, and will change usage to that. Unless the author gives me grief about it, in which case I give in because life is short.