Where have my colons gone?!

[BIWI]

I've noticed recently that if you type a sentence that ends with a colon, if (e.g) you're linking to something, that once you press 'enter', the colon disappears.

I realise that this is most certainly not a first world problem, but for a grammar pedant it's troubling

Incidentally, I've checked this on two different browsers (Safari and Brave) and the same thing happens.

@BIWI Same here, I thought it was my keyboard playing up.

Checking whether it works today

Nope. It appears as I type it, then as soon as I move on it disappears. How peculiar.

Trying here too :

It stayed; happy days!

Strange : ;

I'm on an android phone (Samsung) using the default browser.

Testing:
Still there🙂
But I’m on the app.

Now trying Duck Duck Go:
Still there it would seem.

Looks like some of you have been CHOSEN😬😬😆

Cuz I'm speshul, obvs, innit?

Same here on Chrome. Annoying because on the book list threads I had to stop using e.g. 21. at the start of a post a few years ago because it auto-numbered it to 1. so I switched to 21 colon.

All this autoformatting is bloody annoying, I much prefer to sort my own out, I wish MN had a way of opting out of it. I switch it off on all my devices but MN still persists with it.

Not wanting to de-rail but my keyboard won’t automatically do capital letters at the beginning of sentences on mumsnet, fine everywhere else. Anyone else?

i can do colons though, behold:

That is just a MN quirk. Most of us have decided to find it charming.

Testing again😀

Well that's weird. This time it auto-corrected a colon to a smiley face. What the blazes is happening? I'm on the desktop version on a Chromebook.

:

all good here

I've definitely had that problem too, @BIWI . I'm so glad you posted this thread because I thought it was my rubbishy Chromebook causing the problem. Or more precisely, I thought it was my 'Netflix and chomp' habit, leading to parts of my keyboard getting gummed up with food debris.

It seems intermittent, though , and I can't work out what situation triggers it

I've been trying to add colons in various parts of this post and they are all failing, at least in the 'composing' field.

If I type a colon, and then press enter, it disappears. When I backspace to delete the new line I've just made, I can't type a colon at all. Even though everything else might have been deleted.

: : : :

Random text followed by attempted colon

I'm on Chrome. Looks like it has something to do with the codes for emojis... my colons are randomly disappearing, turning into a smile or activating the emoji code menu thing

🐂Oh yes. I see there are some extremely important emoticons available as a result of depriving us of a piece of useful punctuation. 👟👙

@Seziah Well that's one of the most bloody stupid things, isn't it?

Bring Back Our Colons!!!

It seems particularly pointless because in order to get the one you want, you have to know its official name and put in the correct first letter (testing a poop) :poop:

Well I’ve changed to my phone and the codes don’t even work on Safari I guess!

Let me try:

Mine’s ok 🙂 (that’s not meant to be smug!)

OPs colon has disappeared and you can't even poop properly 😱

But did you press the enter key after typing the colon?

Thank goodness, I hate auto-capitalisation as much as any other form of auto-correction. Please don't bring it in MN.

I was having issues last night - Colon didn't show up at all. I thought it was a keyboard issue. MS Edge.
:: : :
: : :::
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Seems ok now - Amazon Silk.

I had this problem the other day

Yep, still got it. And as someone said, now it won't even put in a colon when I hit the keys, never mind taking it out once I did manage to get one on the screen.

After an enter it lets me put ONE colon in (which it then takes out when I hit enter).
: Chrome

Ah, got one to stay. Enter, colon, other text, enter - & it's still there.