Posted by Smokey Stover on May 25, 2007
In Reply to: Re: Take the bull by the horns posted by Smokey Stover on May 25, 2007
: : : : : : What does the phrase mean to "take the bull by the horns"?
: : : : : It means to do something difficult in a determined and confident way; to take the initiative in confronting a difficult position as in 'You'll never decide what you want in life by just thinking about it; you must take the bull by the horns and try out a few possibilities.'
: : : : Why do quotation marks and apostrophes show up as question marks?
: : : Do we have any examples of one who took the bull by the horns, other than those Minoan athletes? In regard to what happens to quotations and apostrophes, I'm guessing that your word processing program uses directionalized quotation markss and apostrophes, rather than the plain Jane straight up-and-down in your basic ASCII set. The question mark is the way this word-processor (that is, the one on this site) says, "Huh?"
: : : " ' ‟ " ❝ ❞ There are ways to insert peculiar characters into the messages on this site, but I don't know how to do it reliably. There's an Old English character (fricative g) that I've been entirely unable to reproduce.
: : : SS
: : Bull by the horns: http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/18/messages/972.html
: : Sometimes the quotes come up funky when text is pasted in from Word. Let us test this theory.
: : "Pasted in from Word."
: : "Not pasted in from Word."
: "Bull by the horns, pasted in from WordPerfect"
: The quotation marks from WordPerfect seem to fare better, once the new post is saved.