Un-Smarten Punctuation?

[sunsetsoda]

I greatly dislike "smart" punctuation in general, and now it's causing issues when I send books to my new Kobo Clara Colour. Apostrophes appear to have extra space after them (not present in the book editor), which makes it very hard to read. Currently, I've resorted to opening each of my (700+) ebooks in the editor and applying some saved searches to replace the "smart" punctuation, but it would be so much easier if I could just hit a hotkey and automatically fix it. Is there any way to do that, especially without opening every single book?

[kovidgoyal]

Conversion has a function to unsmarten punctuation automatically under the Text section of the Look & feel tab. And you can of course convert in bulk.

[fogice]

Originally Posted by sunsetsoda

I greatly dislike "smart" punctuation in general, and now it's causing issues when I send books to my new Kobo Clara Colour. Apostrophes appear to have extra space after them (not present in the book editor), which makes it very hard to read. Currently, I've resorted to opening each of my (700+) ebooks in the editor and applying some saved searches to replace the "smart" punctuation, but it would be so much easier if I could just hit a hotkey and automatically fix it. Is there any way to do that, especially without opening every single book?

I think that might be the font; try a different font and see if the spacing issue goes away.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by fogice

I think that might be the font; try a different font and see if the spacing issue goes away.

Yes. Following enlarged and in Georgia for clarity:

So-called Smart punctuation is simply correct punctuation using “ ” ‘ ’ ’, double quotes, single quotes, possessive indication and apostrophe for missing letter(s). A Word Processor may put ‘87 or ‘tis as an opening quote instead of apostrophe (correctly ’87 or ’tis), so not that smart. There is also ′ and ″ for feet/inches, minutes/seconds (prime and double prime). A wordprocessor usually incorrectly has 5’ 6” instead of 5′ 6″
The ' and " are 19th Century typewriter symbols. A typesetter would have used context to put the correct symbol. The ' might sometimes be valid in dictionaries or transliteration of a foreign alphabet and word.

The teletype based on 19th C. USA typewriter (including @ for quantity at price) in 1928. That then was used in 1940s for computers and then from 1970s for most personal computers and minicomputers and IBM-PC from 1980-81.


Unsmartening punctuation is crazy. Your font or ebook is broken if the spacing is wrong for proper punctuation marks. The closing single quote and dual function apostrophe are all the same symbol in English, but not in many languages even using Latin-Roman alphabet.