This is odd and consistent too. I type 4 dashes in a row (not underline) and a smiley face appears. Maybe its a Happy Halloween pic. Is this a setting, feature, or bug?
I wonder if it is a font-specific thing. Doing as you suggested I get ———— Font is Century.
The font change idea seemed logical. I tried a dozen different fonts including “Century”, only to have the same results. It only occurs inside Scrivener. Weird!!!
I’m glad its not everyone. However, what there must be some conflict/setting.
Not happening for me either, but maybe that’s because I have set Scrivener up to replace two dashes with an en-dash and three with an em-dash.
I get a question mark in a box instead of the fourth dash. Font is Calibri.
I tried this using Calibri Light and got the smiley-face issue, exactly as described. Changed to regular Calibri and to Century and got the same result as well.
Tried this.
In blank main editor window, type 4 dashes. The 4th one is replaced by a short space, and the TITLE shows a long dash and a smiley face.
Type 4 dashes in the synopsis (not the title part of the synopsis), and the Title shows 4 dashes.
Type 3 dashes in Doc Notes, and you get a longer dash and a short dash. Type 4 dashes in Document Notes, and you get a long dash and a space. Copy that, paste it into the synopsis, the Title shows a long dash and a smiley face.
“Show invisibles” does not seem to change this behavior. It appears there’s an invisible character in the editor, being treated as a space, but the Title line shows the character.
I don’t have a 3-dashes substitution, and I don’t have a 4-dashes substitution. I checked the substitutions list, and nothing like that is in there. I do have “replace double hyphens with em-dashes” checked, but that’s not what’s happening here. Three dashes are being replaced by an extra long dash, and the fourth is making a strange character.
I’m still not able to get the smiley faces no matter what I do. However, all the stuff above is what I have and get with trying to type in the dashes. Additionally, I tried typing the 3 and 4 dash string in the title of the document and ended up with three or four dashes - it never did the substitution as it does in the main editor window. I do get the substitution in the document notes area, but not in the synopsis area. The substitution will also take place in the comments section. I’ve tried many different fonts, but still get what I posted before (no smiley faces though). Very strange.
I realized the document in which this happened was created using a template from 1.9.x, and was then converted by 2.9.0.x.
I created a new doc using a 2.9 template, and all was fine. I tested with a new doc using a manually-rebuilt template for 2.9, and all was fine.
Perhaps something similar is causing this for you?