Dot appears under letter

  • Thread starter Thread starter pbkry2r
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pbkry2r

I have a movable dot under a letter in a manuscript I'm editing and I can't
figure out what it's for or how to delete it. It's under a does-not-equal
sign, and when I delete the sign and replace it with a new one, the dot moves
to another letter. When I delete the letters and retype them, the dot
returns to its original spot. I'm not talking about the dots that appear
between letters when you click the show/hide formatting key. I'm not
tracking changes or adding comments in this document, but I am using
bookmarks. Could the bookmark be leaving this dot?

Windows XP Pro, Word 2007, all with current service packs.
 
Can you select the dot? (Put the cursor before or after it and type
Shift-RightArrow or -LeftArrow.) If you can, then you can delete it --
but before you delete it, press Alt-X and it will tell you the Unicode
number for the character, and you can look it up in Insert Symbol.
 
Thanks for your suggestion. I tried that, both clicking the symbol and using
the keyboard shortcut that you suggest and the dot stayed where it was. I
get all the standard formatting symbols when I toggle them on. I'm using
Times New Roman. I changed the font but the dot remained. I deleted the
symbol it was under, the does-not-equal sign, and the dot scooted to the
space to the left. I inserted a new does-not-equal sign and it went back
under it. I inserted a different symbol, same behavior. I cut-and-pasted it
to a new document with a different template and got the same thing. I
printed the new document, and the dot printed. Very strange.
 
Thanks! After much trial and error, I was able to select the dot, press Alt-X
and it gave me the Unicode. Turns out it's a dot from the private use area
of the symbols. Well, someone at my company must need it ...

Thanks again!
 
If you find out who created it, you could point out to them that
there's a "Combining Diacritic" for dot-under, which might do what
they need without hanging around when the letter it's under is
deleted. (Somehow it knows to disappear when you delete its host
letter.)
 
I suspect it's some sort of coding gone wrong. This manuscript was scanned
in from a printed book and converted to Word. The default language on the
document was Asian (Japanese), which wasn't even listed as a language option
for my version of word. I made a new template and copied the files over as
plain text so I could set the default at U.S. English. Perhaps some errant
coding followed it over. Thanks for your suggestions!
 
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