The text in my comment changed overnight

@Asylum (47893)
Manchester, England
March 16, 2016 6:25am CST
I realise how ridiculous the title to this discussion must seem, but it is actually true. The specific piece of text that I refer to was not actual letters or words that were typed on my keyboard, but a mathematical symbol that I inserted. There were a couple of discussions recently about Pi Day, both of which I responded to. In one of my comments I had reason to use the Greek symbol itself. Of course I cannot simply type that into the comment, so I used Microsoft Word. I typed out the sentence using Unicode to create the symbol, then copied and pasted it to the comment box. This worked fine and the symbol appeared, yet this morning it is just showing small p instead. I would have understood this if it failed to display the symbol initially, but cannot figure out why it worked temporarily.
14 people like this
14 responses
• United States
16 Mar 16
It is far too complicated for my simple mind. I need questions that are easy as pie, not pi.
1 person likes this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Mar 16
As a teacher you most certainly encountered Pi during your mathematics studie. You must also know the symbol used to denote it, which was what I inserted into a comment.
1 person likes this
• United States
17 Mar 16
@Asylum Sure, I know all that. I had the required two classes of high school algebra and two classes of geometry. I avoid all the rest until college when I was forced to take another class of algebra. Later, in my MBA program, I had linear programming. Although this looked like algebra on steroids, after it was explained to me, it became simple. I just thought of it as another foreign language. But I still prefer pie over pi.
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
17 Mar 16
@ElizabethWallace Treating it as a language is certainly a good approach because primarily it is just that.
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@Inlemay (17714)
• South Africa
17 Mar 16
I wish we could use more symbols - sometimes ??? question marks appear in the oddest of places
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
17 Mar 16
Typing a question mark is easy enough unless you wish to type something in Spanish because they use an upside down question mark before the text.
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
17 Mar 16
@Inlemay I have never encountered an issue with - & ?. I know that I can add an accent to the letter a because I have often used the name Plácido, but I wonder if it will retain the tilde over the n if I type Señor.
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@Inlemay (17714)
• South Africa
17 Mar 16
@Asylum thats what I was saying - when I use a dash it changes to a ? Let me see if this one works "“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” ? Dr. Seuss"
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@rebelann (110776)
• El Paso, Texas
16 Mar 16
Oh the many wonders the text ghost.
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Mar 16
I thought that the text ghost was exorcised a long while ago.
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Mar 16
@rebelann Oh dear, I do hope that she did not have sextuplets.
1 person likes this
@rebelann (110776)
• El Paso, Texas
16 Mar 16
Well, 1 was @Asylum but his wife was pregnant
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@Bluedoll (16774)
• Canada
21 Mar 16
Isn't that weird. I don't think it is gremlins or someone in the server room that hates 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820.. so my guess it has something to do with the browser? Is that even possible? Refresh is always different?
1 person likes this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
21 Mar 16
I see that you typed the first few digits of pi and gave up.
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
21 Mar 16
@Bluedoll Not really, they just had nothing better to do because televisions and computers did not exist.
@Bluedoll (16774)
• Canada
21 Mar 16
@Asylum it took me a long time to pencil them out too i drew a circle and the diameter was 1.65 measured around the circle which was really hard and found it to be 5.18 then I divided 5.18 by 1.65 and got 3 then divided again and got 1 and then divided again... lot of work but those Greeks were smart people eh?
1 person likes this
@pgntwo (22412)
• Derry, Northern Ireland
21 Mar 16
Have you noticed how the myLot Search function strips out punctuation? Annoying.
1 person likes this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
21 Mar 16
The search feature can be difficult to use at times because we need to guess what tags have been used.
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
21 Mar 16
@pgntwo Yes, we do have some good alternatives now.
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@pgntwo (22412)
• Derry, Northern Ireland
21 Mar 16
@Asylum I go straight to "Full Text Discussions" when searching, tags are too unreliable, you're right.
1 person likes this
• Midland, Michigan
16 Mar 16
Maybe it's a bug that hasn't been squished yet or not even found. I had a comment to a response that I read over a few times and then recently I couldn't find it anywhere. That was a bit weird too and mine was solely in English, no symbols to interpret.
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Mar 16
It could have been deleted by the member who made the comment. In my case everything was still present, except that it had slightly changed.
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Mar 16
@MarshaMusselman I hope that you do not find it on another discussion, which would prove very confusing.
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• Midland, Michigan
16 Mar 16
@Asylum I wasthe member that made that particular comment. Funny thing was, that I read it again a few days later, but when I went last to that post, it wasn't there even though I opened up all the 'more comments' areas. You watch, I'll find it again later or something.
1 person likes this
@kaka135 (14918)
• Malaysia
16 Mar 16
It's quite weird. I am just thinking, perhaps it relates to how the symbol is saved in the database. When it's retrieved from the database and display on screen, it's not decoded well. But I have no idea why it was shown fine yesterday.
1 person likes this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Mar 16
It took me by surprise this morning because I obviously knew what I had posted. As you say, it must be related to how the text is interpreted, but should have failed initially.
1 person likes this
@marguicha (214294)
• Chile
17 Mar 16
I have ceased trying to understand computer keyboards and computer minds. There are some letters and accents in Spanish that the keyboard has, yet it shows something else. I guess we will end up with a new way of writing words
1 person likes this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
17 Mar 16
@marguicha This is not an unusual situation.
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
17 Mar 16
It is not uncommon for keyboards to generate a different symbol than is displayed on the key. A common example is for the @ and " to be transposed.
1 person likes this
@marguicha (214294)
• Chile
17 Mar 16
@Asylum I have to do one action at the keyboard of my big computer for the @ to show up and another in my laptop
1 person likes this
@SIMPLYD (90727)
• Philippines
17 Mar 16
Maybe it was a glitch . Though , why would it change ? Weird .
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
17 Mar 16
I edited the text and it still returned to the letter p, so the confusion is why it displayed well originally.
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@SIMPLYD (90727)
• Philippines
17 Mar 16
@Asylum That is strange indeed .
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@marlina (154183)
• Canada
16 Mar 16
It is a mystery to me!
1 person likes this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Mar 16
I recently edited the comment and it reverted to the letter p again.
@LadyDuck (454987)
• Switzerland
16 Mar 16
This is weird, if it showed correctly when you typed it, I cannot understand why it changed.
1 person likes this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Mar 16
The failure to display as a symbol would be quite understandable, but the fact that it displayed originally confused me.
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• Eugene, Oregon
17 Mar 16
That does seem very odd. I don't understand either.
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
17 Mar 16
I would have actually doubted that it could happen if it had not happened to me.
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• United States
16 Mar 16
OK, I'll take the pins out of my stuffed keyboard.
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Mar 16
Oh, so it was your fault all along. You made a voodoo doll of my keyboard.
@AkoPinay (11546)
• Philippines
16 Mar 16
I can't figure it out too
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@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
16 Mar 16
I have edited the comment to replace the p with the right symbol, so I now curious to see how long this remains as such.
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