Help needed for basic check errors

Question

Can someone tell me what I need to do to get rid of these errors shown up by basic checks?
For a project using Roman script:

1. Invalid medial punctuation PT9.1.104.59 tells me that this is an error: (21:1-22:1). This is in a book introduction and we’re trying to say something about verses 21:1 to 22:1. I see that “-” is already listed in the Number settings as a possible medial punctuation, so I’m not sure why this is an error.
2. Punctuation missing at end of paragraph We have a paragraph that ends with a colon. The next paragraph starts with \p. Where can I tell PT that a colon is an acceptable punctuation to end a paragraph?

For a project using Burmese script:
3) Invalid extra material I noticed that these errors are all found following \r under a section heading. Does this happen when the book and verses referenced there have not been translated yet? Is there a way to get rid of these errors (besides translating those passages)?
4) Invalid prefix These occur in book introductions where we’re giving a range of chapters (e.g. 10-15, except that the numbers are in Burmese script). It seems that the hyphen between two numbers is causing the invalid prefix error. How can I tell PT that this is not an error?

Answer 1

1. The colon also needs to be marked as medial punctuation.
2. Try the Markers missing final punctuation inventory (Tools > Checking inventories > Markers missing final punctuation). There is also an Options button on that inventory that has more settings for you to customize the behavior.
3. Invalid extra material means that it detected that there is other text inside the \r marker text that is not part of the reference itself. In English, this is usually something like \r See Mrk 2.14-2.18 (the "See " is considered “extra material”). An example would help give a more exact answer.
4. They hyphen shouldn’t cause that error if it’s surrounded by numbers. Can you post an example?

Comments

Thank you very much.

1. adding the colon did not fix the problem. The text that shows up as a problem is (21:1-22:1). I’ve added both the hyphen and the colon, but it has’t fixed the problem. Any ideas?
2. Fixed.
3. I’ll discuss this with the MTTs and see what extra words are in there.
4. The hyphen is between a number and a word. They are trying to write “at (chapter) 11” and “at (chapter) 12”. But they’ve written literally “11-at” and “12-at” and they’ve done it by attaching the hyphen to the number, which I think is making PT think that the number is a prefix. Normally the particle meaning “at” is attached directly to the word before it, but I think because it might look odd to attach it to numerals, the MTTs put a hyphen between the number and the “at”. Assuming that the MTTs say that the hyphen is needed, is there a way to tell PT that this is acceptable?

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1. check your project Scripture reference settings to see what symbol Paratext is expecting as the chapter-verse separator. If you want colon, you can set it to use colon.

2. It may be possible to define “-at” as extra text in the Scripture reference settings. But maybe the extra text needs to be not attached to the chapter number.

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The hyphen is a problem because the Scripture reference that you are showing is spanning chapters. If You look at your Scripture Reference settings you will probably find that the longer em dash is set for references that span chapters. You may change this setting, but is recommended that you mark references that span verses differently than those that span chapters.

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You can certainly use words to mark spans across chapters. Here is an example of a project that used the word “until” when a reference spanned one or more chapter boundaries.

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I changed the chapter spanning marker to be the em dash and changed the text to reflect it, but it didn’t solve the problem. Could it because the verse references are within parentheses without the name or abbreviation of the book? That is, simply (21:1–22:1) I was able to “solve” it by making the chapter span marker thus: (21:1 - 22:1).

Update: I was also able to solve it by putting in the name of the book in the parentheses and going back to the hyphen like this: (Numbers 21:1-22:1) I guess without the name of the book, PT was looking at it as just numbers, rather than Scripture references?

But I would still like to know how to get Paratext to accept something like (21:1-22:1) or (21:1–22:1).

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Answers below:

1. Invalid medial punctuation. - This is a reference, so if you are not using \r or \ior or \mr with it, wrap it in \xt … \xt* and the error will go away (unless you have to fix the reference.)
2. Punctuation missing at end of paragraph – This is set in the Project Menu/Tools/Checking Inventories/Markers missing final punctuation inventory. This is most useful when “Show all final punctuation” is ticked.
3. Invalid Extra material – You don’t provide enough information to answer your question and I don’t think you have found the right reason, unless perhaps you have an empty \r and do not have a \p following it before the verse number? Paratext will view all text following the \r as a reference to be checked until it finds a paragraph marker.
4. Invalid prefix – wrap even these in \xt … \xt* and make sure that you use the symbol for chapter bridge that you’ve defined in the Scripture Reference Settings (Project Menu/Project Settings).

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Thank you for the detailed explanation. I’ll look at it more closely tomorrow along with the MTTs and try to make these errors go away.

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The following signs using in PT will help him, I think:
hyphen (-) \u002D
n-dash (–) \u2013
m-dash (—) \u2014

Answer 2

While I have your attention, I’m finding another problem to ask about. The error code is “Invalid Book” in the \r line. As far as I can tell, the name of the book is the same as what’s used in \toc2, so I’m not sure what the problem is.

Never mind. I figured it out. \r was set to look for abbreviations instead of short name.

Comments

On second thoughts, I deleted my Burmese words.

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That used to be true. However, now the check is working off the Scripture Reference Settings found in the Project Menu/Properties/Scripture Reference Settings. Paratext does fill this in for you at certain times, but if you edit the \toc lines in your text, it does not update it unless you tell it to. When there is a mismatch between the \toc lines in your text and the Scripture Reference Settings, there will be an orange bar in the menu indicating a conflict. If you click there, you are easily guided in updating the lists.

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Thank you. Yes, once we noticed that little setting in the Scripture Reference Settings, we understood where the error came from. And yes, we’ll have to pay attention to that list of book names and abbreviations and keep it updated and accurate.

Answer 3

Another error involving a footnote. The phrase ‘Urim’ hai ‘Thumim’ was selected as a footnote. The single quotes appear because they’re within another quote.

But basic checks marks ‘Urim’ hai ‘Thumim’ as an error if it shows up in \fq or \ft saying that it’s a quote in quote without a quote. If I get rid of the single quotes in the footnote or replace the single quotes with double quotes in the footnote, then it generates a different error saying that the text is not found in the verse.

Is there another solution to this besides just deleting the \fq reference?

Comments

There are a couple of ways you can handle this error:

1. Change the single quotes to double quotes and then change the \fq to \fqa (which doesn’t get checked for accuracy).
2. Recognizing that the text is correct you could deny the error (Go to the menu of the list window and click Deny or use CTRL+D)

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Thank you. Are there many others that don’t get checked for accuracy? Are all (or most) markers used as an alternate not checked for accuracy?

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I think what anon848905 meant is that the \fqa text does not get checked for accuracy in matching the Scripture text. It did and still should be checked for correctness in all other ways. You can use the \fqa line and put double quotes instead of single quotes, thus satisfying the quote check.

Of course, this is not really using the marker correctly if the text is supposed to be the part directly quoted from the Scripture and I would advise one of my teams to deny the error rather than changing the text. I’d rather it still exactly matched the Scripture however possible.

Blessings,

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I absolutely agree with :@Shegnada on this

if the text is supposed to be the part directly quoted from the Scripture and I would advise one of my teams to deny the error rather than changing the text. I’d rather it still exactly matched the Scripture

That said, I would recommend to the developers to exclude text in \fq from the Quotations check.There is no benefit in doing so because the text is already checked against the main text using the Quoted Text check and the main text is checked with the Quotations check. Checking text in \fq using the Quotations check only leads to errors needing to be denied…