Introduction: Dot Codes
Working with Plain Text
When working with plain text, either in variable prompts, dialog element text, plain-text resources, or in answers generated by computation scripts, you frequently want to assign font properties to the text, such as bolding, italicizing, and underlining. Additionally, you may want to punctuate and capitalize characters in plain text as well as insert special characters, such as hyphens and other punctuation marks.
To format text, insert dot code fields in your prompts, text, or scripts. During assembly, these dot codes will be processed and will apply whatever formatting you specify to the text.
Unfortunately, dot codes that format answer text in a form document cannot be processed because the text is in plain-text format and cannot allow formatting, such as bold and italics. To explain, think of when you've worked on a plain-text document in Notepad. You can insert characters like line breaks, section symbols, and punctuation in a Notepad document, but you cannot make character-level formatting changes. HotDocs uses this same plain text in form document answers. Dot codes that insert characters (such as line breaks, section symbols, and so forth), however, are processed without any problems in forms.
Punctuating Non-Repeated Lists
Dot codes can also be used to merge punctuation for non-repeated lists in the template. Using a series of dot codes, you can define the punctuation mark that should be used to separate items in the list as well as define the conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) used for the list. This is useful when you have separate answers that are being merged conditionally in list format.
Full List of Dot Codes
The following tables list all of the dot codes that are available in HotDocs:
Character Format:
| Name | Dot Code | What it Does |
| Bold | «.b»/«.be» | Applies bold formatting to the enclosed word or group of words |
| Hidden | «.h»/«.he» | Applies the hidden text property to a word or group of words
The dot code «.h»/«.he» is not allowed in prompts, dialog titles, or resources. |
| Italic | «.i»/«.ie» | Applies italic formatting to a word or group of words |
| Strike-through | «.x»/«.xe» | Crosses out a word or group of words |
| Underline | «.u»/«.ue» | Applies underline formatting to a word or group of words |
| Size | «.z»/«.ze» | Increases or decreases the font size for a word or group of words by a specified percentage. The dot code «.z +Size» is a percent increase in the current size. The dot code, «.z -Size» is a percent decrease in the current size. (When you select this option, HotDocs displays a dialog box asking you to specify these properties.) |
| All Caps | «.a»/«.ae» | Capitalizes every letter in the selected text |
| Capitalize Letter | «.c» | Capitalizes the word immediately following the code |
| Leading Caps | «.l»/«.le» | Capitalizes the first letter of each word in the enclosed text |
| Small Caps | «.s»/«.se» | Capitalizes each lowercase letter in the enclosed text and displays them at a smaller font size. For example, "The Quick Brown Fox" would be come "THE QUICK BROWN FOX".
The dot code «.s»/«.se» is only fully supported in JavaScript interviews. In Silverlight interview all text is capitalized and displayed at the smaller font size, including existing capital letters. In desktop interviews this dot code has no effect. |
Character Insertion:
| Name | Dot Code | What it Does |
| An | «.an» | Inserts a or an, depending on whether the word that follows begins with a consonant or a vowel |
| Left Apostrophe | «.la» | Inserts a left apostrophe |
| Right Apostrophe | «.ra» | Inserts a right apostrophe |
| Left Quote | «.lq» | Inserts a left quotation mark |
| Right Quote | «.rq» | Inserts a right quotation mark |
| Paragraph Symbol | «.ps» | Inserts a paragraph character |
| Section Symbol | «.ss» | Inserts a section symbol character |
| Tab Character | «.tc» | Inserts a tab character |
| Line Break | «.lb» | Inserts a line break |
| Paragraph Mark | «.pm» | Inserts a paragraph mark |
| Page Break | «.pb» | Inserts a page break |
| Non-breaking Space | «.ns» | Inserts a non-breaking space character |
| Non-breaking Hyphen | «.nh» | Inserts a non-breaking hyphen character |
| Optional Hyphen | «.oh» | Inserts an optional hyphen character |
Sentence Punctuation:
| Name | Dot Code | What it Does |
| Period | «.» | Inserts a period if no other punctuation precedes it |
| Colon | «:» | Inserts a colon if no other punctuation precedes it |
| Exclamation Mark | «!» | Inserts an exclamation point if no other punctuation precedes it |
| Question Mark | «?» | Inserts a question mark if no other punctuation precedes it |
| Comma | «,» | Inserts a comma if no other punctuation precedes it |
| Semicolon | «;» | Inserts a semicolon if no other punctuation precedes it |
List Punctuation:
| Name | Dot Code | What it Does |
| Punctuation Setup | «.p "style"»«.pe» | Identifies the beginning of a punctuated list and assigns the punctuation format to it. The closing dot code identifies where the punctuated list ends. |
| Punctuation Item | «.p» | Used within the Punctuation Setup and identifies where the punctuation character should be inserted |
Web Link:
| Name | Dot Code | What It Does |
| Web Link Dot Code | «.w "URL"»/«.we» | Inserts a Web link Enter the link text between the two dot codes |