Healing Font

[Hypersmurf]

Not a very useful shorthand... it just saves one character (not counting that to get the square brackets, you need to press extra keys)

It's useful because you can type [ts] on a keyboard, whereas to insert the 'times' symbol requires some sort of outside intervention - switching to the Symbol font, or inserting a graphic, or whatever.

If the typist puts "1d6 x Wisdom modifier", and then the layout people do a Global Replace of "x" with a symbol, you end up with words like "example". Whereas it's unlikely that there will be any instance of "[ts]" that isn't intended to be replaced, so there's no danger in the Global Replace.

... except when you forget to do it.

-Hyp.

 

[Nikosandros]

I actually meant writing [ts] instead of writing 'times' as a word... anyhow, I wasn't really serious.

 

[mattdm]

It's useful because you can type [ts] on a keyboard, whereas to insert the 'times' symbol requires some sort of outside intervention - switching to the Symbol font, or inserting a graphic, or whatever.

Hmmm, works for me with my keyboard — no special fonts, no graphics: ×, ×, ×.

Maybe it's time for you to get a new operating system.

But I agree this is likely the reason for the [ts] code.

 

[Kordeth]

I actually meant writing [ts] instead of writing 'times' as a word... anyhow, I wasn't really serious.

It's not a "shorthand" in the sense of an abbreviation, it's a typographical note to tell the layout people to replace it with the multiplication symbol (which as others have pointed out is not just the lowercase letter x).

 

[Nikosandros]

It's not a "shorthand" in the sense of an abbreviation, it's a typographical note to tell the layout people to replace it with the multiplication symbol (which as others have pointed out is not just the lowercase letter x).

It's fascinating that my very stupid joke is generating more discussion that the actual rule...