# Microsoft Word played a dirty trick on me (periods changed to semi-colons) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 10, 2006, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889 "2006-11-10T17:30:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/1 "2006-11-10T17:30:12Z")
I changed the title of a .doc document and - what d’you know - most periods were turned into semi-colons in all 62 pages. I said most but not all, mostly in short words and abbreviations. Any explanation? Just curious. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Good\_Friday\_Spell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ad7895/32.png) [@The\_Good\_Friday\_Spell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Good_Friday_Spell)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/2 "2006-11-10T17:36:02Z")
62 pages? Is this a novel? ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/3 "2006-11-10T17:46:59Z")
Did you leave the .doc extension alone? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/4 "2006-11-10T17:49:18Z")
Novels would be at least 300 pages. A long novel could be in four digits. 62 pages would barely be a novella. Or just a long work document. Welcome to the real world where a 10-page paper is a normal day’s work and not a midterm. I’m not sure I understand where the periods would be in “short words” that are not abbreviations. But I guess I don’t understand how changing the title of a .doc would result in any change at all to the periods either. Sometimes the apostrophes in words like don’t or can’t are interpreted as single quotes by some browsers, but that’s as close as I can get. Do you have any more information about the original document? Font? Styles? Anything? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/5 "2006-11-10T18:20:34Z")
And yet people continue to use Microsoft Word. Astonishing. ---
**Author:** ![Kizarvexius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/da6949/32.png) [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/6 "2006-11-10T20:37:07Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] And yet people continue to use Microsoft Word. Astonishing. [/QUOTE] The joys of institutional site licenses. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/7 "2006-11-10T20:42:12Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] And yet people continue to use Microsoft Word. Astonishing. [/QUOTE] What do you recommend as a substitute? I’ve used Word Perfect, and despite the fact that I generally like Corel products, I far prefer Word’s workflow. And it’s not unfamiliarility with the product–I used Word Perfect for a good 1 1/2 years at a particular job, and really did not like the program. Are there other word processors you recommend? ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/8 "2006-11-10T20:57:46Z")
[QUOTE=The\_Good\_Friday\_Spell] 62 pages? Is this a novel? [/QUOTE] It’s a paper on botany ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/9 "2006-11-10T21:05:44Z")
[QUOTE=gigi] Did you leave the .doc extension alone? [/QUOTE] I didn’t change the extension. An it’s the first time it ever happened. ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/10 "2006-11-10T21:20:54Z")
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase] Novels would be at least 300 pages. A long novel could be in four digits. 62 pages would barely be a novella. Or just a long work document. Welcome to the real world where a 10-page paper is a normal day’s work and not a midterm. I’m not sure I understand where the periods would be in “short words” that are not abbreviations. But I guess I don’t understand how changing the title of a .doc would result in any change at all to the periods either. Sometimes the apostrophes in words like don’t or can’t are interpreted as single quotes by some browsers, but that’s as close as I can get. Do you have any more information about the original document? Font? Styles? Anything? [/QUOTE] I don’t understand either, that’s why I asked. Any short word like at the end of a sentence. Font: Times New Roman Styles: normal text with many bold or italicized words. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/11 "2006-11-10T21:23:20Z")
Completely wild guess, since it’s been ages since I’ve used Word for anything… Word recognizes several different styles in its grammar-checker, so that something might be acceptable in a technical paper, but not in an essay, or vice-versa. Maybe it makes its initial assumption about a document’s style based partly on a title? When you changed the title, then, it thought it was a different style, and its auto-correct went crazy changing everything to what it thought was the new style. Mind you, periods to semicolons would be an insane thing to auto-correct, and probably not even a good idea to flag at all (since periods and semicolons are mostly interchangeable, grammatically). But this is Microsoft we’re talking about, here. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/12 "2006-11-10T21:46:27Z")
[QUOTE=pulykamell] What do you recommend as a substitute? [/QUOTE] a) Corel WordPerfect b) Lotus WordPro c) AbiWord d) OpenOffice Writer e) KWord f) AppleWorks g) MarinerWrite h) Pages i) Nisus Writer j) MacWrite Pro k) AmiPro l) Qjot m) WriteNow n) FullWrite o) MacWrite II p) Pages q) OpenWrite r) TextEdit s) CedarWord t) Claris Works u) SciTEXT v) XAllWrite w) AmigaWriter x) NotePad y) The Open Firmware Prompt z) A stick and a clay tablet ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/13 "2006-11-10T21:52:41Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] a) Corel WordPerfect b) Lotus WordPro c) AbiWord d) OpenOffice Writer e) KWord f) AppleWorks g) MarinerWrite h) Pages i) Nisus Writer j) MacWrite Pro k) AmiPro l) Qjot m) WriteNow n) FullWrite o) MacWrite II p) Pages q) OpenWrite r) TextEdit s) CedarWord t) Claris Works u) SciTEXT v) XAllWrite w) AmigaWriter x) NotePad y) The Open Firmware Prompt z) A stick and a clay tablet [/QUOTE] You left out FrameMaker. 😃 FM is far more robust that Word, and Structured FrameMaker is a joy. I routinely write 600-page manuals chock full of indices, tables of contents, illustrations, crossreferences, and photographs. Only two\* real cons: the price, and a brick-wall learning-curve at times. [sub]\*Oh, and Reference Pages. Reference Pages are frightening. But we won’t mention Reference Pages to the newbies.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/14 "2006-11-10T21:55:14Z")
[QUOTE=Gymnopithys] I changed the title of a .doc document and - what d’you know - most periods were turned into semi-colons in all 62 pages. I said most but not all, mostly in short words and abbreviations. Any explanation? Just curious. [/QUOTE] It has been my experience that Word is unreliable when dealing woth documents of more than about 50 pages. I had similar experiences to you _more than ten years ago_ when I wrote a 60-page fixture manual in Word. I really hoped that they had fixed that by now. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/15 "2006-11-10T22:08:44Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] You left out FrameMaker. 😃 [/QUOTE] Having used FrameMaker, I think it is good that he left it off as a suitable replacement for Word. FrameMaker sucks. To paraphrase Larry Wall “It makes hard things possible and easy things hard”. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/16 "2006-11-10T22:13:20Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] a) Corel WordPerfect b) Lotus WordPro c) AbiWord d) OpenOffice Writer e) KWord f) AppleWorks g) MarinerWrite h) Pages i) Nisus Writer j) MacWrite Pro k) AmiPro l) Qjot m) WriteNow n) FullWrite o) MacWrite II p) Pages q) OpenWrite r) TextEdit s) CedarWord t) Claris Works u) SciTEXT v) XAllWrite w) AmigaWriter x) NotePad y) The Open Firmware Prompt z) A stick and a clay tablet [/QUOTE] Well, I’ve already mentioned that I really don’t like WordPerfect, so I should rephrase my question to what word processing program, other than Word Perfect, should I use in place of Word, and which is readable by a majority of computer users. In other words, I need something that I can compose in, save, and email editable documents and not worry whether the end user has the software to read the file. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/17 "2006-11-10T22:21:29Z")
[QUOTE=gazpacho] Having used FrameMaker, I think it is good that he left it off as a suitable replacement for Word. FrameMaker sucks. To paraphrase Larry Wall “It makes hard things possible and easy things hard”. [/QUOTE] I get paid for doing hard things. But yes, that’s the brick-wall learning-curve I mentioned. And I agree that the user interface needs top be brought up to the rest of Adobe’s standard, at a minimum. Only in recent versions did FM even get an always-present Undo option! However, when dealing with long complex documents, such as that botany paper in the OP, it should be considered. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/18 "2006-11-10T22:23:33Z")
[QUOTE=pulykamell] Well, I’ve already mentioned that I really don’t like WordPerfect, so I should rephrase my question to what word processing program, other than Word Perfect, should I use in place of Word, and which is readable by a majority of computer users. In other words, I need something that I can compose in, save, and email editable documents and not worry whether the end user has the software to read the file. [/QUOTE] Try OpenOffice Writer. It’s free, and it saves in older Word formats if you really need that, although its native file format is Open Document Format. If you don’t like it, you haven’t expended a lot of money on it. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/19 "2006-11-10T22:33:57Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] Try OpenOffice Writer. It’s free, and it saves in older Word formats if you really need that, although its native file format is Open Document Format. If you don’t like it, you haven’t expended a lot of money on it. [/QUOTE] I’ll check it out. I’m actually not a Microsoft disciple or anything like that (I’m primarily a Mac user, I prefer Firefox to IE, etc…), but Microsoft Word has actually been one of the few programs I do like from Microsoft better than its competition. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2006, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889/20 "2006-11-10T22:40:06Z")
If you’re on a Windows PC rather than a Mac: have you ever tried Lotus WordPro? It takes a bit of getting used to if you’re a Word user, it steers different. OTOH, why switch if you’re switching to something that behaves like Word? It’s quite nice. If you’re on a Mac, try Pages from iWork. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/microsoft-word-played-a-dirty-trick-on-me-periods-changed-to-semi-colons/379889.md?page=2)