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Outcast
March 28, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: March 28, 2005
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To Zhangyan re fixing funny quote marks
Hi Zhangyan.
I noticed your quote marks came out funny when you used them in your last message, like in ¡°tian tian kuai le¡±. MS word always converts the standard " style "striaight quotes" into the 66 99 style "smart quotes," which aren’t printable on the MLE bulletin boards. So they come out looking funny, ¡° ¡±. You either have to change them back after you paste them into the create message page, or you can undo the conversion immediately after you type them in by typing Alt-Backspace right away after MS-Word converts the character.
You can even disable this automatic conversion of quotes on the Tools Menu, in Autocorrect options. Click the "Autoformat as you type" tab, and uncheck the very first selection, "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes."
Zhu4 ni3 hao3,
Make
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Mark S.
March 25, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Re:English teacher can help me
Hi,
I notice you used the term "Greenhand" here. I'd like to comment on that, if you don't mind, but I'll post my comment in the "Slang/expressions" area where people are more likely to look for this kind of information. I'll see you therd!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA US
English teacher can help me newlife-wang
I am Chinese.I'd like to study English. My Major job is computer hardware enginner.So I can teach anyone who want to learn chinese(m)with internet.I think I am a greenhand in English. So I will try my best to teach other person who is a freshman in Chinese.In the other side, I like sports and computer games. So I think I can get along with most person.
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
March 24, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Spell check: Answer to Dwyn's question
Dwyn asked if there was a spellchecker for these messages.
I'm not aware of one that we can use when we enter messages on the boards, but I'll tell you how I spellcheck my messages: I write them in MS-Word. It works very well for me, because it tells me of many spelling or grammar errors while I'm typing. It's also handy in MS-Word, because the Tools menu also has a word count feature that also tells me how many characters I have. And when you love talking as much as I do, that's priceless to me. I have so much trouble keeping my messages shorter than 3000 words!
One suggestion I would offer to those who want to become adept at using Word's grammar and spell checkers is, never allow either to work unsupervised--especially not the grammar checker, but really either one.
The grammar checker's grammar rules are not always the same ones I use. Sometimes, it tries to correct things that I know aren't wrong, and has often overlooked errors that were really blaring. There are really two problems with any grammar checker. First, all of the rules of English Grammar cannot be programmed into a computer; only a significant handful. Second, there are many controversial grammar rules, and we may not always agree with the grammar rules that Microsoft's programmer chose to implement. For example, a new rule according to the Modern Language Association holds that it is no longer necessary to double-space between sentences. You can use one space, or two spaces, as long as you choose one or the other and always do it the same way.
Of course, if you decide to single-space between sentences, your grammar checker is going to hold you up for an hour fixing "errors" that aren't wrong.
The problem with spellcheckers is that they will only catch spelling errors that make non-existent words. It's very easy to see that "teh" is an error and to suggest you may have meant to type "the." But if you are typing "then" and it comes out "hen,” the spell checker won't see a problem there. As far as it's concerned, you did a great job of spelling "hen" and it has no way of knowing that that isn't what you meant to type.
So I share with you the same advice I give all of my composition students: Spell-checkers and grammar checkers can be very useful. But they are never a replacement for careful, conscientious proofreading.
I always proofread my messages several times. Once when I write them, once again some time later (If I'm writing something that needs to be of high quality, I wait a minimum of 24 hours before proofreading again. I proofread it again before I cut and paste it into MyLanguageExchange, and once more before I hit the submit button.
But I am, as you all know, pretty anal about such things.
Happy composing!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
February 26, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Unprintable quotes and apostrophes
My message number 45254 taught me an interesting lesson:
If you choose to edit your messages in MS Word and cut and paste them into mylanguageexchange, be sure to watch out for quotation marks. MS word uses very pretty quotation marks that slant left and right so that they look better in your document. But like the Z with a tail character, it's outside the basic character set, and as you will have seen, they don't print correctly on the bulletin board. I needed to go back in and convert all of those fancy characters back into regular " " and ' ' quote marks and apostrophes.
In case you were wondering about that, and in case you want to know how to avoid it...
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA.
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Language pair: English; English
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Mark S.
February 18, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: February 18, 2005
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Typing accents and other international characters:
There was a question on another board about how to type characters with accents in our messages. I told him that I¡¦d answer his question here, just in case someone else has the same question, because this would be the best board to look on for such an answer. I hope this document is helpful to Patrick, and to whoever else might have this question.
If you have MS-Word, open the ¡§Symbol¡¨ command on the ¡§Insert¡¨ menu. The Symbol window will show you all of the most common international characters. You can either type your message in MS Word, inserting international symbols as needed from this Insert / Symbol window, cutting and pasting your completed message into Language Exchange¡¦s create message window, or you can note down the Alt- key codes for the characters you¡¦ll want to use, as they appear here in the symbol insert window. Once you have the alt-key code for the symbol you want, you can manually enter it in either in MS-Word, or in any other application, such as Language Exchange message create. To do this, just hold down the alt key while you type all four characters of the alt code (be sure and add as many zeros to the beginning of the code number as it takes to make four digits. When you release the Alt key after entering the four-digit key code, your special character will appear.
When using ¡§insert / symbol,¡¨ it¡¦s important to remember that only the basic character sets, like Times New Roman, or Ariel will work reliably in Language Exchange create message. The more sophisticated language sets such as Times New Roman Special G1 or Wingdings contain characters that are not supported by Language Exchange, and will appear as an unprintable character: „Ð
There are exceptions to this. For example, Amazon, in message 45033, has entered some wonderful Japanese and Chinese characters. I posted a message asking her how she managed that, and I¡¦m still waiting to hear back.
If you like to type your messages in Word and then cut and paste them into create message afterwards, there are some more convenient shortcuts for typing these international characters. To get these shortcuts, Use the office assistant to search for the phrase, ¡§keyboard shortcuts for international characters¡¨ This will bring up a list of all of the most commonly used international characters, along with the keyboard shortcuts that will create them. These shortcuts are very easy to remember and pretty easy to use.
I hope some of you find this helpful. See you on the boards!
Mark Spinger
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: English; English
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Mark S.
February 18, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: February 18, 2005
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Re:Polish characters on text chat
I know how to do this in MS Word, but not in text messaging here at this web site. If you find out, please let me know.
I've learned that in MS Word, on the Insert Menu, you can do an insert symbol. I usually use the Times New Roman font, but if I change the font to Times New Roman Special G1, I see all of my missing Turkish characters, as well as at least some of the characters you need for Polish.
But I cannot cut them from word and paste them into the message forms here at Language Exchange, nor can I use the appropriate alt- codes to type them in directly, because the font here uses the same character set as the default Times New Roman font.
I know that's not much help, but it's all I know. Please let me know anything you learn about this, because it will probably help me too.
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: English; Polish
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Mark S.
February 14, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: March 28, 2005
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Typing turkins dotless "i"s and dotted "I"s.
Anybody know how to type Turkish I's in these forms? I tried doing it in Word and pasting it here, but it came out unprintable. I also tried shifting to another character set and finding it at Alt-0207, but when I put Alt-0207 here, it comes out as I with an umlaut Ï.
Anybody out there working in Turkish figured this one out?
Thanks!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
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Language pair: Turkish; English
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Mark S.
February 14, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Chicago R.
February 11, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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MESSAGE#41598
MESSAGE#41598 MY NAME IS PATRICIA TORRY
HELLO LEE...CAN YOU TEACH ME MANDARIN AND I WILL DO MY BEST TO HELP YOU SPEAK NATURAL ENGLISH. I AM A NATIVE NEW YORKER..WE CAN SPEAK OVER THE INTERNET. I CAN SPEAK SOME CHINESE. IT WAS MY MAJOR IN COLLEGE. I HOPE YOU CONTACT ME.
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Language pair: English; Chinese, Mandarin
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Pattie P.
January 23, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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