weird paragraph marks

[Alan]

Using Word 2k.
I've been given a Word file with what looks like simple slabs of text,
just one paragraph after another.

I'm processing the file for DTP, and my layout app was choking on what
it saw as huge paragraphs.

In Word I have tabs and pars visible, and I see the backwards P at the
end of each paragraph (not the bent arrow for a manual linebreak).

But there is something odd about many of these paragraphs.

If I save to RTF and open the file resulting in Wordpad, many of these
marks have disappeared and the paragraphs run together.

If I do a triple-click in Word, to select a para, several of these
"paragraphs" are highlighted, over a page.

If I do search and replace for ^p, only a few paragraph marks are
found.

Ultimately I found that by saving as HTML, then opening that in Word
again, then saving back, I converted these things to "normal"
paragraph marks.

Any idea what's going on, and a simpler way to convert them to normal
paragraph markers?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Depending on what program produced the original text, it's possible to
get characters in a document that look like paragraph marks but don't
have all the properties of a real paragraph mark. The easiest way to
convert them is to search for ^13 (the ASCII code of a "carriage
return") and replace with ^p.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Alan]

Depending on what program produced the original text, it's possible to
get characters in a document that look like paragraph marks but don't
have all the properties of a real paragraph mark. The easiest way to
convert them is to search for ^13 (the ASCII code of a "carriage
return") and replace with ^p.

Thanks, that works.
That finds both the normal and abnormal paragraph marks.

I thought the standard (DOS/Windows) paragraph was terminated by a
CR/LF. (^13^10 = ^p)
But searching for linefeed (^10) doesn't find anything?
Or is Word just hiding this?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Thanks, that works.
That finds both the normal and abnormal paragraph marks.

I thought the standard (DOS/Windows) paragraph was terminated by a
CR/LF. (^13^10 = ^p)
But searching for linefeed (^10) doesn't find anything?
Or is Word just hiding this?

Word has always gone its own way on this issue. I remember Woody Leonhard
ranting about it in Word 2.0 (back in the days when he actually wrote his
own books <g>).

In the text-stream part of a Word file, a paragraph mark is represented by a
^13; but that's supplemented in the binary part of the file by an object
definition that contains all the information about the paragraph's
formatting. If imported ASCII text contains a ^13^10 pair, the import filter
_should_ change that to just ^13 and add the object definition. Sometimes it
fails to complete the second part of that, so you get a ^13 that doesn't
behave as a real paragraph mark. Pasting text from a web page or other
external source can also cause the same problem.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.