replace apostrophes with smart quotes

General comments and questions. Technical support.
Post Reply
franklekens
Posts: 84
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2017 3:15 pm

replace apostrophes with smart quotes

Post by franklekens »

MS Word does a rather good with when you try to replace "straight quotes' with “smart quotes”. Suppose my text says:

'I don't like this',' I said.

If I activate the "use smart quotes" feature in MS Word, I only have to do a search and replace of ' by ' (yes, I actually type the same character in both fields!), and MS Word will "magically" turn it into this:

‘I don’t like this,’ I said.
(And ditto for " versus “ and ”.)

Atlantis is definitely as good as MS Word at turning ' into ‘ and ’ on the fly, as I type, which is mostly what I need. It doesn't entirely understand the Dutch rules for ‘ versus ’ when it's used elliptically. (This use differs slightly from English.) But that's no great matter, since that doesn't occur very often.

But when I have a piece of text where all the quotes are in "straight" quotes, I see no easy way of converting these to smart quotes. Sure, I can do search and replace actions with <space+'>being changed into ‘ and <'+space> into ’, but that doesn't cover everything. So for that I usually revert to MS Word and quickly do a "smart" search and replace there.

Is that indeed the easiest way, or am I overlooking something basic in Atlantis that will enable me to do it there as well?

MTIA.
Robert
Posts: 1890
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

To change “smart (curvy)” quotes into "straight" quotes:
Select the target text.
Press Ctrl+H.
Enter a straight quote into the Find What box.
Enter a straight quote into the Replace With box.
Press Replace All.

To change "straight" quotes into “smart (curvy)” quotes:
Click “Tools | AutoCorrect Options…”
In the AutoCorrect Options dialog, make sure that “Replace quotes with…” is activated.
OK out of the AutoCorrect Options dialog.
Click “Tools | AutoCorrect…”
When Atlantis suggests to replace “straight” with “curly” quote, press the “Accept All” button.
mcleaver
Posts: 39
Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2004 9:51 am
Location: Amsterdam, NL

Apostrophes

Post by mcleaver »

Looking for help on smart quotes in Atlantis - I came across my own message from 2004!
I note that Atlantis intelligently supports left and right quotes and apostrophes... (single and double quotes) - unless you want to replace an unintelligent single quote (a vertical bar) with an intelligent apostrophe (a small 9). Then it doesn't seem quote so smart... Maye this is a feature request??
Rgds
Martin
Now the problem still seems to exist. (And even my old friend Frank Lekens faces it.) How to do a search and replace to get smark quotes instead of vertical ones? In this case I mean single quotes. ‘xxx’
Robert
Posts: 1890
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:27 pm

Post by Robert »

The same method applies.

To change “smart (curvy)” single quotes into "straight" single quotes:
Select the target text.
Press Ctrl+H.
Enter a straight single quote into the Find What box.
Enter a straight single quote into the Replace With box.
Press Replace All.

To change "straight" single quotes into “smart (curvy)” single quotes:
Click “Tools | AutoCorrect Options…”
In the AutoCorrect Options dialog, make sure that “Replace quotes with…” is activated.
OK out of the AutoCorrect Options dialog.
Click “Tools | AutoCorrect…”
When Atlantis suggests to replace “straight” with “curly” quote, press the “Accept All” button.
Note.
If you do not want Atlantis to replace straight with curvy quotes automatically, simply turn off “Replace "quotes" with ...” in the “Tools | AutoCorrect Options…” dialog:

Image
Post Reply