em dash close quotes

[BetterRed]

I was wondering if anyone has a cogent explanation as why so many word processors, ebook editors, and at least one 'overly smart' text editor have a problem with dialogue ending in an em dash followed by a closing quotes i.e.

“Blah, blah, blah—“ rather than “Blah, blah, blah—”

My reading of the The Chicago Manual of Style, is that it recommends em dash be used to indicate interrupted speech. It's also recommended in many other style guides - Penguin & the OUP are notable exceptions.

I have read a few explanations, but they don't make much sense as they stem from a programmers perspective. Many of whom couldn't distinguish a sentence of prose from a 10 year sentence in gaol. I'm allowed to say that because I was a programmer in a former existence

BR

[DiapDealer]

Text editors/word processors have no problem with a closing quote following an emdash. None whatsoever. Certain incarnations of certain popular algorithms for "smartening" punctuation, however, have been known to produce the effect you've pointed out; when they're asked to magically fix all the "dumb" punctuation that someone typed into a text editor.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Text editors/word processors have no problem with a closing quote following an emdash. None whatsoever. Certain incarnations of certain popular algorithms for "smartening" punctuation, however, have been known to produce the effect you've pointed out; when they're asked to magically fix all the "dumb" punctuation that someone typed into a text editor.

The attachment show Word 2007 - to get the correct close quote on the second dialogue fragment I typed double quote twice and deleted the first one.

I don't have OOo Writer on this machine but I have the same problem there - its not the latest version, and I saw the same problem in Jutoh when I had it.

And then there is this https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1286477 (its referring to hyphen and close quotes) I'm pretty sure there was a similar report referring to em dash, but I think that's now fixed.

The so-called 'smart editor' I mentioned is on my Mint netbook - Top Editor or something, the defective algorithm is also in it, it was only developed last year - its not very good so I should bin it.

I'd always assumed the problem was peculiar to Word, it was in 2003 and maybe earlier, its in 2007 and 2010 (see http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/o...5-aba87a974430), not sure about 2013.

Its only since I started editing ebook fiction that I've seen the problem manifest elsewhere. So I started to question my assumption - that it's a MS bug. And that made me wonder if there's some arcane typographical reason, or that the CMS is wrong etc - hence my question here.

But if it really is a bug in some algo, then why doesn't someone rewrite the algo, and write dissertation on how they did it. I'm gobsmacked that the same 'bug' has been popping up in so many places over such a long time - if it was isolated to MS Word then... Maybe it was inherited from Xerox Star or Wang WP.

BR

[DiapDealer]

I don't understand what you're saying with regard to editors and "bugs." Word doesn't create the wrong-facing closing quote you refer to, to my knowledge. Are you creating (meaning typing) texts of your own (with Word) that have this particular issue, or are you opening/editing existing texts that someone else created that are already messed up?

As to why the smartening algorithm hasn't been re-written, I suspect it's because not a lot of people use it (not for creation anyway). Most documents of any quality are created with proper typographic quotes from the very beginning. They're not created with straight quotes and then handed to an algorithm for bulk conversion later.

As for backlist titles that are scanned and slammed to market, I suspect the publisher probably believes the smartening algorithm to be "close enough."

Automagically "smartening" punctuation later will probably always be a bit of an imperfect hack.

[davidfor]

I think what BetterRed is referring to in Word is that it can convert the quotes as you type. If you type a double quote using the keyboard, type some text and then another double quote, Word will convert these to the curly quotes appropriate for the start and and of a quote.

As to why the bug happens in a few places, the only reason I can think of is that the people think that the way Word does it is correct. Actually, I can picture a tester raising a bug report pointing to Word as the way its supposed to be handled. I've seen a few reports like that over the years.

Another possibility is languages. Different languages use different characters for quotes, and I think Spanish uses dashes. I could see someone having a set of possible opening quote characters and another of closing quote characters. Then it is matching any element in the sets rather than the matching the similar elements. And I'll admit it, I've written some code like that Luckily, I caught it while testing.

[DiapDealer]

Ah, I see. I don't really use word-processors much myself. Definitely sounds like a bug to me, in that case. I have no idea what algorithm Word would use.

After some quick looking, it appears that Word's auto-format feature does not recognize en or em dashes as end-of-word characters. It appears to be designed (if flawed) behavior--for whatever reason. I'd suggest getting used to using one of the several shortcuts to insert open/close quotes characters directly rather than relying on auto-format to get it right. Another option is to add the closing quote before backing up to insert the en|em dash.

[DrNefario]

I wonder if that combination of characters is more commonly used to begin a nested quotation, or something.

Whenever I write anything it has neither em dashes nor proper quotation marks! since my keyboard features neither. I have to make do with - and ". If I ever published anything it would need to be converted somehow. And not automatically corrected by a "helpful" piece of software later in the chain.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

Whenever I write anything it has neither em dashes nor proper quotation marks! since my keyboard features neither. I have to make do with - and ". If I ever published anything it would need to be converted somehow. And not automatically corrected by a "helpful" piece of software later in the chain.

If you use regular dashes where you want em dashes, no converter in the world will be able to correct that for you. If you don't want to use a script to do it for you, then you will be limited to exactly one option: going through the document manually and making/approving each and every change.

If your eventual goal is publication with typographic quotes and em/en dashes, it's best to just put them in from the getgo. Most keyboards don't have those keys, but most modern word processing applications provide their own keyboard shortcuts for inserting them (and most OSes have their own shortcuts as well).

It's become almost second nature for me to use ALT + 0147 and ALT + 0148 on Windows for typographic quotes (and ALT + 0151 for emdashes/ALT + 0145 and ALT + 0146 for single quotes/apostrophes). I believe Word has even shorter keystrokes for doing so. *shrug*

The other option is to get a publisher who'll take care of it for you.

[Jessica Lares]

Last night my editor of choice (Chocolat) was doing that to me while using Markdown. It drove me nuts. Thank god for find and replace!

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

Whenever I write anything it has neither em dashes nor proper quotation marks! since my keyboard features neither.

And sometimes it has exclamation marks I totally didn't put there.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

Whenever I write anything it has neither em dashes nor proper quotation marks! since my keyboard features neither. I have to make do with - and ". If I ever published anything it would need to be converted somehow. And not automatically corrected by a "helpful" piece of software later in the chain.

Most word processors will provide "shortcuts" to allow you to type them easily even if your keyboard doesn't have them.

[DrNefario]

The weird thing is that I'm perfectly happy with straight quotes, but a wrong angled quote is unacceptable.

And I'll fully admit that I have no idea how to use em dashes.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

And I'll fully admit that I have no idea how to use em dashes.

You use them as breaks in a sentence—a longer break than a comma would be used for (as this example shows). A hyphen should only ever be used to (as its name suggests) hyphenate words.

[Catlady]

What annoys me is that Word doesn't seem to treat a close quote after an em dash as an nonbreakable unit--i.e., it will break a line after the dash, and put the close quote on a new line.

[cadele]

Originally Posted by Catlady

What annoys me is that Word doesn't seem to treat a close quote after an em dash as an nonbreakable unit--i.e., it will break a line after the dash, and put the close quote on a new line.

+1. This is a bugbear of mine too.