How to convert straight quotes to smart 'curly' typographer's quotes

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Maybe they lost the code

But if they did, the EU would probably 'order' them offer OOo, AbiWord, Wordstar and Atlantis as alternatives for Word, like Mario Monti 'ordered' them to offer alternate browsers - which they never obeyed. Mario's reward was to be parachuted into the Palazzo Chigi (Italy's 10 Downing St). He's now a Senator for Life.

There's some VBA code here that could be made smarter.

BR

The EU is ignorant at times, but this would not be the case of course. It will be a feature of Word. What they protested about (and I think it was silly) is that MS incorporated Explorer with Windows and they needed to make sure people could easily choose another browser, which is nonsense because almost nobody does this that didn't do it earlier anyway... Also, Apple always delivers Safari, and that is allowed. Double standards....

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

There's some VBA code here that could be made smarter.

This VBA code is nothing much actually. It is just a simple search/replace and will not fix the common mistakes that Word makes...

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

The EU is ignorant at times, but this would not be the case of course. It will be a feature of Word. What they protested about (and I think it was silly) is that MS incorporated Explorer with Windows and they needed to make sure people could easily choose another browser, which is nonsense because almost nobody does this that didn't do it earlier anyway... Also, Apple always delivers Safari, and that is allowed. Double standards....

I rarely miss an opportunity to take the p**s out the EU. The only similar institution that was more dysfunctional than it is now, was the USSR! EU Commission = USSR politburo. I left the UK soon after the last in-out referendum.

Originally Posted by Toxaris

This VBA code is nothing much actually. It is just a simple search/replace and will not fix the common mistakes that Word makes...

I know, that's why I said 'could be made smarter'

Besides it wasn't meant for you - it's an April 1st present for Jon

BR

[Toxaris]

I know that in my Smarten Quotes procedure in the add-in I run about 15-16 fixes to repair common mistakes by MS with regards to the quotes. Some are straight, others are RegEx. It fixes a lot of mistakes, but will not catch things like 'Twas, 'ell and things like that. It is not possible, at least I haven't found them, to define rules for those.
And, of course, language difference also play a part in this. For example, in Dutch we have words like " 's nachts " (at night). Word always use the wrong quote for that. There are a lot more options in dutch for a single letter with a apostrophe before (n, k, m, r, t) where this goes wrong.
Anyway, I have created a set of rules to fix those mistakes. This also prevents a lot of false hits in my Check Dialogue procedure.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

I know that in my Smarten Quotes procedure in the add-in I run about 15-16 fixes to repair common mistakes by MS with regards to the quotes. Some are straight, others are RegEx. It fixes a lot of mistakes, but will not catch things like 'Twas, 'ell and things like that. It is not possible, at least I haven't found them, to define rules for those.

'Twas is difficult but 'ell is fairly easy since it is reasonable to think that any word after a ' would begin with a capital letter. At least in the majority of cases.

Dale

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

'Twas is difficult but 'ell is fairly easy since it is reasonable to think that any word after a ' would begin with a capital letter. At least in the majority of cases.

Dale

I might reply 'you're wrong' to that statement .

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I might reply 'you're wrong' to that statement .

According to my Hodges' Harbrace College Handbook that would be:

I might reply, "You're wrong," to that statement. It is only not capitalized if it is a fragment. But I did say in the majority, not all.

Dale

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

'Twas is difficult but 'ell is fairly easy since it is reasonable to think that any word after a ' would begin with a capital letter. At least in the majority of cases.

Dale

Sorry, I don't agree. Very often dialogue can continue after a short break. For example: 'Listen,' she said, 'to the music playing'.

In this case it seems easy enough, as it is a comma, space, quote, lowercase. But, in this case the quote is usually correct so it should be ignored. There are many more examples that can be given.
IF there are clear rules, we can automate it. A majority of cases doesn't cut it, you would be better of with manual correction then. If you know up front that the book you are working on has several of these occurrences, you could mark them beforehand and repair them. So, in you example, mark 'ell like <>ell (for my add-in procedure) and at the end of the procedure it will automatically have the correct quote. It would be fairly easy to conjure such a list and execute it just before the quote fixes.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

{...} like Mario Monti 'ordered' them to offer alternate browsers - which they never obeyed. Mario's reward was to be parachuted into the Palazzo Chigi (Italy's 10 Downing St). He's now a Senator for Life.

Microsoft did obey. On a new install of Windows you got a pagefull of browsers from which you can choose one, two or more.

I chose Firefox and IE10.

However

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/.../ff606439.aspx

What is the Browser Choice Update?

Microsoft provided the Browser Choice update in accordance with a decision issued by the European Commission in December 2009. The obligations imposed by that decision have expired and as a result the Browser Choice Update will no longer be delivered to new users.
==

[MacEachaidh]

I always find it disappointing to read a retail ebook where the quotes haven't been proofread and corrected, because to me it means ... well, I read it as they haven't taken due care. Modern publishing is so sloppy.

I read one just recently that had a sentence, something like: "'And 'im 'is 'at." And all the words were proceeded by an opening single quote, whereas I think they should have been apostrophes. (As I learnt it, they mark where the letter has been omitted, rather than referring to what follows. As in contractions like shouldn't.) I showed it to a friend, who even used to work in publishing, and was astounded to hear her insist that what they had was correct "in modern English". After some lengthy discussion, I realised she thinks it's correct mostly because it's the kind of thing she's used to seeing in all kinds of print media.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

I read one just recently that had a sentence, something like: "'And 'im 'is 'at." And all the words were proceeded by an opening single quote, whereas I think they should have been apostrophes. (As I learnt it, they mark where the letter has been omitted, rather than referring to what follows. As in contractions like shouldn't.) I showed it to a friend, who even used to work in publishing, and was astounded to hear her insist that what they had was correct "in modern English". After some lengthy discussion, I realised she thinks it's correct mostly because it's the kind of thing she's used to seeing in all kinds of print media.

You're right and your friend is wrong.

[MacEachaidh]

Haha, to me that was never in question! ;-)

My point, really, is that getting them right is fiddly and has to be done manually, because even modern tools (like Microsoft ->ptui!!<- Word) are too blunt to handle the task automatically, but it's still frustrating to see even commercially-published books not making the effort. (Heck, I've got retail epubs that clearly haven't even been through a spelling checker.)

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

Haha, to me that was never in question! ;-)

My point, really, is that getting them right is fiddly and has to be done manually, because even modern tools (like Microsoft ->ptui!!<- Word) are too blunt to handle the task automatically, but it's still frustrating to see even commercially-published books not making the effort. (Heck, I've got retail epubs that clearly haven't even been through a spelling checker.)

I have to remark here that Word does a fairly job and it cannot be expected to replace common sense and education. It can only apply rules if it can predict them. So, no more than one to two characters after the quote can be taken into account realistically. It is far from perfect, I agree to that.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

After some lengthy discussion, I realised she thinks it's correct mostly because it's the kind of thing she's used to seeing in all kinds of print media.

Which probably means that it will be correct in a few years, once all "old" people who care have died and the only "authority" remaining is whatever the computer's default gives.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Which probably means that it will be correct in a few years, once all "old" people who care have died and the only "authority" remaining is whatever the computer's default gives.

A scary thought...