If the sentence does not end with a period, when you move to a new line using the enter button, capitalization does not occur, as happens, for example, in the web version of MS Word. Can this option be enabled?
I can’t find a way to do that (version 7.4.7.2).
You can post an enhancement request at bugs.documentfoundation.org/
There is already two bug reports:
- tdf#130366, and
- tdf#88666
and a third one: - tdf#87911
and there is more: - tdf#80521
I don’t think that a sentence does continue across a paragraph but there are precedents. Older books frequently have ordered lists commencing after the opening clause’s semi-colon that are separated by paragraphs but start with a lower case letter and end with a comma.
On the other hand Word 2010 does capitalise the first letter after a paragraph mark.
And where is the inconvenience of pressing Shift with the key after Enter? With this manual procedure you finely control what you desire.
Manual solution for automatic process? It’s no good. I know what Shift does. Highly annoying when a paragraph does not end with a dot and you automatically type and then have to manually correct it. Also, if I’m not mistaken, capitalization does not work if you switch windows and return to the writer’s window.
So it probably “feature” and not “bug”, or in any case probably won’t be fixed. Thanks.
@ajlittoz IIUC, @mfm008 doesn’t talk about line breaks, but about proper paragraphs. The question is - why the previous paragraph doesn’t end sentences; and how frequent such a correct situation is, compared to another situation, when paragraphs are (mis)used for something else, not ending a sentence and expecting that it “continues” in the next para (very incorrect IMO, and thus I sympathize this question). OTOH, if not ending previous paragraph is not a correct thing, then expecting something “correct” after something “incorrect” feels like “GIGO”.
@mikekaganski I understood that paragraph breaks were at stake since OP states that Enter is used without any modifier. I consider the use case as exceptional (= exception to a rule, infrequent). Consequently, fixing the “auto-capitalisation” manually is not a heavy burden.
In principle, a paragraph is made of complete sentences and these sentences should be grammatically correct, i.e. ending with a punctuation.
I admit there are cases where you want to split a sentence into several “pseudo-paragraphs” because of formatting constraints where a new line doesn’t offer the desired function. Note I mention “sentence” and, since the sentence is continued in the next “paragraph”, there should be no capitalisation.
The common situation where OP’s behaviour is (perhaps) legitimate is in enumerations presented as a list following a standard introductory paragraph (likely to be terminated by a colon which is not considered a “hard” punctuation by auto-capitalisation). But, since the list items are logical continuations of the introductory paragraph, they should not be capitalised according to rules in many languages (not sure for English and specifically US English where capitalisation differs considerably from other countries). Such items can have no final punctuation or comma/semi-colon with full stop on the last one (but this calls for caution when reorganising the list order).
All in all, I think the request highly depends on the kind of document and user’s formatting and layout preferences. If OP can characterise a repeatable context, a rule could be designed but I personally consider the case rare enough to be fixed manually.
@mfm008 didn’t mention his styling skills. Depending on context, his problem could be handled with a specific configuration of Font Effects of a dedicated style. But M$ Word did not accustom users to this approach. Any way, we need more information about the use case.
In version 7.5.4.2 auto-capitalization does not always work. I can’t find a clear pattern. The sequence “dot, space, symbols” does not always give auto-capitalization. I’ve noticed this in text where a paragraph often ends with characters like “1996).” (some date in parentheses). With alphabetic characters, this also sometimes happens, I checked. If you write a number + parenthesis, a single letter + parenthesis, then a dot, a space, and alphabetic characters, auto-capitalization does not occur. Apparently, the writer does not consider this as the beginning of a new sentence, perhaps it perceives it as some kind of list.
This is possible. I experimented with various patterns. Everything which looks like numbering a paragraph (with or without “decorators” around the number) seems to be considered a list item and is not passed to auto-capitalisation, confirming my intuition about “logical” structure of a list (see my previous post).
Regarding paragraphs without final full stop (punctuation), built-in help in AutoCorrect explains the goal of Apply Styles option. If enabled, a paragraph without termination punctuation is turned into a heading. This may interact with auto-capitalisation.
Since there are constraints on the current paragraph style of the line you’re typing, I encourage you to read the exact specification of AutoCorrect to check whether you are in one of the triggering context.
My personal preference is to disable all these “convenience” actions which are mainly offered to ease transition between Word and Writer concepts. Word is notably poorer in style coverage and there actions partially compensate for these insufficiencies. When you use Writer “natively”, i.e. with full, complete and exclusive styling, these actions become a nuisance because they interfere with your styling.