Writing about text
Ten write-ups on the parts of handling text that quietly go wrong: how a find-and-replace ruins a document, which naming convention belongs where, why two files that look identical are not, what an invisible character does to a paste. The tools do the work; these explain what you are about to break.
What Is Lorem Ipsum, and Why Designers Still Use It
Scrambled Cicero that has outlived the printing presses it started on, and the jobs it is quietly bad at.
Read TextWhat a URL Slug Is, and What Makes a Good One
The readable tail of a URL: what belongs in it, why the obvious way of making one breaks, and what changing it later costs you.
Read TextHow to Reverse Text: Characters, Words and Lines
Reversing a string looks like one line of code. That line detaches accents, splits emoji and can turn one flag into another country.
Read TextOnline Notepad With No Signup: Where Your Note Goes
A notepad with no login has nowhere to put your text except your own machine. That is fine for ten minutes and risky for a week.
Read TextInvisible Characters in Text: Find and Remove Them
A space that is not a space, a character with no width, a mark at the start of a file. Where they come from and how to get them out.
Read TextHow to Sort a List Alphabetically and Numerically
Sorting a list is ten seconds of work and a pile of surprises: capitals on top, file10 above file2, accents at the bottom.
Read TextHow to Remove Duplicate Lines From a List
Three ways to dedupe a list, and what to do about the two lines that look identical and refuse to merge.
Read TextHow to Compare Two Texts for Differences
Paste both versions, let the tool line them up, and learn to read the places where the alignment is guessing.
Read TextFind and Replace Text Safely (and What Goes Wrong)
Read the matches before you commit, and the replace-all stops being the thing that costs you an afternoon.
Read TextcamelCase vs snake_case vs kebab-case: Which to Use
Three naming conventions and one rule for choosing between them: the context decides, not your taste.
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