Making 'Smart Quotes' in (x)html

[lindsayw]

Removing (x)html vertical single- and double-quotes, replacing them with sloping single- and double-quotes, similar to the ‘smart quotes’ used by Word Processors.
Consider the short extract: “Hello” he said, “How’s your ‘phantom’ illness?” – this includes left and right double-quotes; left and right single-quotes (citation) and a plain apostrophe.
In html, these all render in vertical quotes unless they are specifically coded otherwise.
Left double-quotes can occur only at the start of a line or after a space. Right double-quotes can occur only before a space or at the end of a line. In html, the start or end of a line can be determined by > or < characters. Citations, the only occurrence of left single-quotes, can start only after a space.
Use “global” Search-&-replace to modify all html files in a given folder.

1. Search-&-replace for >&quot; – replace these left double-quotes with >&ldquo;
2. Search-&-replace for (space)&quot; – replace these left double-quotes with (space)&ldquo;
3. Search-&-replace for &quot;(space) – replace these right double-quotes with &rdquo;(space)
4. Search-&-replace for &quot;< – replace these right double-quotes with &rdquo;<
5. Some right-quotes will have been missed, when an actual space does not immediately follow it in the html code, so Search-&-replace for &quot;& (where a &nbsp; or similar immediately follows the quote) – replace with &rdquo:&
6. Search-&-replace for ALL Apostrophe characters and replace them with &rsquo; ...this replaces ALL single-quotes with right-sloping characters.
7. Now you need to find and replace the left-sloping ones. Search-&-replace for (space)&rsquo; – replace these with (space)&lsquo;

This does rely on your html code being “tight” and predictable, with no variances. You can’t have, for instance: ....end of sentence.</div> on one line but: ...end of sentence. (line break or space) </div> on another. There are also occasional instances of periods outside a quote rather than inside, so an extra check would be required to catch them, but I didn’t bother because I knew the content well enough to know that they didn’t occur.

I modified a 40-document book, 150k words, in ten minutes! Whoopee! I am still proof-reading, of course, to be sure that all instances were changed, but the worst that could happen is that one or two single- or double-quotes would remain as plain vertical ones. And the sloping quotes provide a much better reading experience.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by lindsayw

Left double-quotes can occur only at the start of a line or after a space.

Or after a dash, or after an opening parenthesis

Right double-quotes can occur only before a space or at the end of a line.

Or before a punctuation, can't you imagine a sentence ending "thus"?

In html, the start or end of a line can be determined by > or < characters.

But those characters appear also elsewhere, like the start and end of italics.

Citations, the only occurrence of left single-quotes, can start only after a space.

Or after a dash or parenthesis too. There can also be apostrophes after a space, 'tis possible to find 'em.

1. Search-&-replace for >&quot; – replace these left double-quotes with >&ldquo;

Not all " are &quot;, actually, I never find &quot; in my files, and there are many " that must not be replaced.

Note also that "things like <em>this</em>" are possible

4. Search-&-replace for &quot;< – replace these right double-quotes with &rdquo;<

And—"<em>this</em> is possible" too.

7. Now you need to find and replace the left-sloping ones. Search-&-replace for (space)&rsquo; – replace these with (space)&lsquo;

Replace 'em all...

[lindsayw]

All of these instances are correct (especially the 'tis right apostophe after a space, which would be incorrectly converted to a left-sloping single-quote by my simple method) but rare. I am quite happy to identify those few instances by proof-reading. I also have the advantage of knowing exactly what's in my own stuff! Most of them simply never occur.
But useful, useful.

[lindsayw]

I suppose that I really should explain 2 things:

1. I started writing about 30 years ago, so I have lots of books converted to html more than a decade ago, when plain vertical quotes were the only option available – sloping quotes just did not render properly on most displays. So this simple method applies to html files with old-fashioned code that specifically avoided sloping quotes.

2. Every writer finds a "voice", which is just a preferred method of handling grammatical rules. I personally never use em-dashes abutting words—I find it ugly. I use lots of en-dashes – like this – but always separated by spaces. So my method avoids seeking out occurrences that I know will never happen. So it works FOR ME because I know what my files contain.

...but it may help other old farts...