HubPages does not recognise words or names with accented letters

1. 69

   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   HubPages hubs do not recognise the fact that there are a lot of words and names in common use which stem from other languages and, as such, have accented letters.
   
   Instead of reverting the accented letter to the same letter without the accent, the HubPages 'way' seems to be to remove the offending letter completely from the hub title, any headings and all text. 
   
   In doing so it can make a complete nonsense of the title, names used and any explanations which were correct when written - but now look nonsensical
   
   Ideally I'd like to see the system updated to at least incorporate the accents from the very common European languages (surely that can't be very difficult?)
   
   Alternatively, if this is not affordable, could it please at least be changed so that it leaves the letters intact without the accent so at least the hub makes some sort of sense.

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   1. 0

      Christy Kirwanposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Hi MM,
      
      Are you having this issue on new Hubs, or is it happening on Hubs that have been imported from Squidoo?

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      1. 69

         makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         These are imported Hubs. I used to have the same problem on squidoo but I thought I'd fixed more or less all the problems I had there.
         
         I've definitely got brand new problems here - and since I write a lot about European art it's really downgrading quite a bit of content - especially when the accented letter is in the title - and it just disappears.

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            Christy Kirwanposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            We've had similar character issues with some of the imported Squidoo code. Manually editing the text should fix the problem, but you say the character just disappears instead when you try to edit, is that right?
            
            Just to be clear, you're not having this issue with any new Hubs you've started here on HubPages, correct?

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               relacheposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               My screen name is actually "relâche," and HubPages has mangled this from the get go, which is why I type it without the accent in all my Hubs.
               
               This is not a new problem on this site, it has existed since the beginning, and is not just a problem for imported Hubs.

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            2. 69

               makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               I'm saying every single accented letter which worked fine in Squidoo has entirely disappeared in HubPages. Not just the accent - the accented LETTER has also disappeared.  This is very much a downgrade in terms of what happened on Squidoo where I either lost the accent or it acquired some visible code.
               
               On HubPages I can't even see where the letters are that have disappeared - which makes it very difficult to correct.
               
               I understand what you're saying but this is actually not helpful. I still can't use any accents on any words in the title, capsule titles or links in the links capsule i.e. it's not possible to correct them literally. It's only possible to include the letter without the accent - so long as you can spot all the ones that have disappeared.
               
               Don't you think it's about time a site which serves a global audience also recognises International accents?  Apart from anything else it's incredibly disrespectful to fail to include the accents and I think it's really awful having to include words without them.
               
               Thanks to Relâche for highlighting that this is a problem which has been around for a very long time.

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2. 69

   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   What's really weird is some of the replacements for some of the letters
   
   e.g. églomisé for Eglomise - which should have an e with an acute accent at either end

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      relacheposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      The symbols get replaced when the HubPages system has trouble translating the symbol into code cleanly.  I'm surprised the system seems to both neither use nor recognize standard HTML symbol entities.

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      1. 69

         makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         That's what puzzled me too

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3. 91

   Sue Adamsposted 9 years ago

   I just typed the words
   
   été
   âne
   
   Two French words for "summer" and "donkey" respectively.
   They read fine. Could the problem lie with your browser?

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   1. 69

      makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      If the problem lies with Chrome then we're in big trouble!
      
      I'm assuming you are typing these in text modules as opposed to the title for a link, a hub or a capsule?

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4. 95

   SheilaMilneposted 9 years ago

   I use quite a few accents in hubs about France and have found the Symbol Insert provided in text modules creates them well.  I don't know that I've ever used them in titles where the Symbol Insert doesn't seem to exist.  I do also use alt codes, for example Alt-130 gives é.

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5. 69

   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   The problem lies in
   1) the links module and
   2) all the parts of the hub where the text functionality does not apply - primarily titles for the hub and capsules and the description for images
   
   Sorry - I should have made this clearer.

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6. 78

   Greekgeekposted 9 years ago

   *hauls self out of trapdoor*
   
   MM, I was just working on my Tolkien geekery articles, repairing a ton of accented vowels that had gotten mangled: Arwen Undómiel, Éomer, Foalókë, Túrin, etc, etc.
   
   I thought they'd been borked by Squidoo well before the transfer. Now that I've corrected them on Hubpages, the edits seem to be sticking, even in capsule (module) subtitles and link lists.
   
   Are they not sticking for you?

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   1. 69

      makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the info - How are you doing the corrections in capsule titles and the links capsule?

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         Greekgeekposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Just typing them in manually. Which is tedious, but at least for me they seem to stick.
         
         I wonder if it's different depending on whether you're typing on MacOS or Windows. Most things nowadays are cross-platform, but special character entry is still unique to each operating system. In MacOS, certain combinations of the option key plus another key put an accent over the next character you type: option-i for circumflex, option-u for umlaut, and so on. Whereas in Windows, you enter character codes, right? Or has that changed?
         
         But fixing them is only half the battle. I think my accented characters were all mangled on Squidoo before the transfer, so Hubpages was importing the weird gibbering that Squidoo had turned them into.  Whereas you can't even find the accented characters to fix them— eek!

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7. 75

   Shades-of-truthposted 9 years ago

   makingamark - I had that issue, too, so I went through every single one of my articles, and had to right-click on the word, and add it to the dictionary, and the edit "stuck". When I first came here from Squidoo, I had several of the copyright characters show up, instead of the proper diacritical marks. I even got a message at the top right of one of the articles about copyright problems. Once I added all of the words to the dictionary, the message went away.
   
   Some of the foreign names, and words like exposé, were all wrong.

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   1. 69

      makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I didn't know that. How do you add the word to the dictionary - is this a HubPages Dictionary?

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         Shades-of-truthposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Sorry for the delayed reply. I commented right before I left our store for the evening. When you are in "edit" mode, and editing a text capsule, simply right click on any words that are incorrect - displaying the red curved line underneath them, and click on "add to dictionary". That will solve the problem.

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         1. 69

            makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            I'm guessing you didn't see my post here http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/127755#post2693446
            
            It's not the text capsule that's the problem

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               Shades-of-truthposted 9 years agoin reply to this

               makingamark, I did see that, and saw that you wrote:
               "The problem lies in
               1) the links module and
               2) all the parts of the hub where the text functionality does not apply - primarily titles for the hub and capsules and the description for images"
               
               I have encountered those errors, in the title, the links capsules, and also in the description for my images. The "add to dictionary" feature has eliminated the problem for me, but I am on WindowsXP, usually using Firefox, on a desktop computer. It may simply be something to do with Chrome on your iMac.
               
               The first time I saw that issue, I was a bit horrified, as it made it appear as though I had added several nonsensical words.

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                  makingamarkposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                  So what you are saying is if
                  1) you set up a text module and
                  2) then insert all the words which cause a problem,
                  3) then add them into the dictionary and
                  4) then delete the module, the words remain in the dictionary
                  
                  ....and that means they are then OK in the parts of the template which does not have the added functionality of the text capsule
                  
                  Have I got that right?

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                     Shades-of-truthposted 9 years agoin reply to this

                     I do not know how deleting the module affects the words added to the dictionary. I do know that one word I use, on a subject I write about frequently, is never seen as a proper English word, although it is!  Once I have "added it to the dictionary", via the right click method, I no longer see any instance of that word underlined in red anywhere in the article.
                     
                     The method you describe above might work; I have not tried it.
                     
                     When my articles first came over from Squidoo, I saw so many "typos-that-weren't", that it alarmed me. By adding every one of the offenders properly into the dictionary, the issue seemed to be resolved.
                     
                     Since I corrected mine one at a time, I really don't know if doing it all at once, as you suggested above, would work. It sounds plausible!

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      SheilaMilneposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      All I did was to copy and paste from the body of text into a heading or caption.  I  know that's just a work-around but it worked for me.  I haven't come across a dictionary inside HubPages.

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8. 69

   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   I'm wondering if people have different issues depending on which operating system they use and which browser they see the screen in.
   
   I'm on an iMac using Chrome - I would have thought I've got more than a few others doing likewise!

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