Punctuation rules of thumb?

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I do check first to make sure that someone has not used one of those strings but so far, that has not happened.

I use ¬, |, ¦, @ as temporary replacement characters. Easy to input from my keyboard, unlikely to be present in any novel-like text (but always check first).

You may get surprises with ’em, days’, ’tis, evermo’, etc. Not to mention ‘em and ‘tis (I have seen them too often).

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Jellby

I use ¬, |, ¦, @ as temporary replacement characters. Easy to input from my keyboard, unlikely to be present in any novel-like text (but always check first).

You may get surprises with ’em, days’, ’tis, evermo’, etc. Not to mention ‘em and ‘tis (I have seen them too often).

Hence the post checking for those cases. Especially on some of my wife's books where they are attempting a Cockney or similar accent.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

It's a pretty simplistic solution. First I convert the 4 flavours of curly quotes into strings of ~ and % and then convert those back into curly quotes.

“ => ~%~% => ‘
” => %~%~ => ’
‘ => ~%%~ => “
’ => %~~% => ”

So the sentence I used in my sample comes out looking like after the first pass:

<p>John said ~%%~I asked Bill and he said ~%~%You should be ashamed of yourself.%~%~ %~~%</p>

I do check first to make sure that someone has not used one of those strings but so far, that has not happened. I also use a cleanup search for a double curly quote between two letters which gets replaced by a right single curly quote if needed. Given that you should never see a curly quote in the code segment, this pretty much covers my needs. These are part of my saved searches.

That should work rather well for what I want. It will make reading some books easier.

[Quoth]

I'd use ¬ and ^ or ~

It depends on context. I've a UK keyboard, Linux (more AltGr characters) and the CapsLock mapped as Compose, so plenty of choice. I first search to make sure the replacement character isn't used.
þ ß ð ĸ ł § « » · Ω ® Ŧ đ ŋ etc are on the AltGr

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Mind posting your steps please? Thanks.

Nothing has really changed in the American “” (Outer) ‘’ (Inner) <-> British ‘’ (Outer) “” (Inner)...

See the 2016 topic, "How to convert straight quotes to smart 'curly' typographer's quotes" (especially my post #26, but read the entire topic). Same exact people have the same exact comments 4 years later.

But I'll go into a bit more detail here.

Flipping Inner/Outer Quotes

The vast majority could be flipped with no issue (using Jellby's "intermediate symbol" method):

• “ -> ¬
• ” -> |
• ‘ -> ¦
• ’ -> @

(Personally, I wouldn't use the @, too common. But you can pick any obscure Unicode characters, like ¤ CURRENCY SIGN (U+00A4))

Then you just have to search/replace the INNER/OUTER symbols to their opposite.

Outer -> Inner:

• “ -> ‘
  
  • “ -> ¦
• ” -> ’
  
  • ” -> @

Inner -> Outer:

• ‘ -> “
  
  • ‘ -> ¬
• ’ -> ”
  
  • ’ -> |

* * *

"Actual Apostrophe" Note: You could do this pass before or after substition. It's up to you.

Look for very common apostrophe word-endings:

• ’s
• ’ll
• ’d

Mark those with a different symbol for "actual apostrophe" (let's pick the ¤ CURRENCY SIGN):

• It¤s
• I¤ll
• You¤d

You could even mark those words that actually use a RIGHT SINGLE QUOTE:

• ¤tis
• ¤til
• ¤em

You'll also have to check possessives that end with s + apostrophe:

• Zeus’
• Chris’

(These have to be decided on a case-by-case basis, because you don't know if it's the end of a quotation or not.)

* * *

Now you replace all those intermediate symbols with the new INNER/OUTER quotations.

Outer -> Inner:

• ¦ -> ‘
• @ -> ’

Inner -> Outer:

• ¬ -> “
• | -> ”

"Actual Apostrophe":

• ¤ -> ’

Look For Mismatches

Afterwards, like the above 2016 topic discusses, you have to do a more thorough check (like Toxaris's Dialogue Check) which looks for mismatching sets of outer/inner quotes.

You could roughly get it with some Regex that looks for these in the same paragraph:

• opening quote + opening quote
• closing quote + closing quote

(If you're doing this, you'll probably want to do this while you still have "Actual Apostrophes" marked as ¤... so they don't interfere.)

Note: Pure Regex will definitely miss a few though. You need something slightly more intelligent that checks both forwards/backwards for mismatches (Toxaris's Dialogue Check is the only thing I know of that does this).

Note 2: Like Jellby says, there are typically a lot of wrong LEFT/RIGHT errors in lots of ebooks (especially around em dashes), so a program may want to squash a lot of those BEFORE doing the flipping steps.

Note 3: Depending on the language, you may have even more "actual apostrophes" in the middle of words... like French uses a lot of:

• l’influence
• d’économie

so another "actual apostrophe" check may just be assume anything in the middle of a word is one:

Search: (\w)’(\w)
Replace: \1¤\2

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That should work rather well for what I want. It will make reading some books easier.

And while you're at it you can fix all those misspelled words that the British insist on using; catalogue, criticise, programme, colour, etc.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by hobnail

And while you're at it you can fix all those misspelled words that the Americans insist on using; catalog, criticize, program, color, etc.

Invented by an American guy compiling a dictionary. UK dictionaries are usage based, not prescriptive.
Actually I believe the Author's regional spelling should be used. You did mean while, not why? Typos can be fixed. The style of Quotes and Layout are publisher things, and UK / Irish publishers use all the different conventions, both single and double quoted text. Consistent house styles for decades.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

You did mean while, not why?

Thanks, fixed.

[BetterRed]

@Jellby - curious: in Spanish would you use an em-dash (u2014) '—' or a quotation dash (horizontal bar) (u2015) '―'. In some fonts a quote dash a tad shorter and heavier than an em dash , e.g. TNR

Em dash : —

Quote dash : ―


BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Note 2: Like Jellby says, there are typically a lot of wrong LEFT/RIGHT errors in lots of ebooks (especially around em dashes), so a program may want to squash a lot of those BEFORE doing the flipping steps.

This recently got fixed in Word, but I'm not sure if it was by me with a bit of blackart autocorrect trickery or if, after a 30+ year wait, a fix was issued by MS. I first came across the issue on IBM DISOSS/PROFS in the '70's.

If I had my druthers we'd all use corners to mark dialogue, they work for RTL, LTR and UP and DOWN languages - clever people them Chinese/Japanese/Koreans.

I've been experimenting with using unicode emojis for temporary replacement markers - they're hard to miss if you fail to remove them. Forgot to say, via AHK.

BR

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@Jellby - curious: in Spanish would you use an em-dash (u2014) '—' or a quotation dash (horizontal bar) (u2015) '―'. In some fonts a quote dash a tad shorter and heavier than an em dash

See "No break space and alignment" from a few months ago.

That HORIZONTAL BAR/"quotation dash" character is missing on a lot of fonts... probably not safe to use in ebooks.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

This recently got fixed in Word, but I'm not sure if it was by me with a bit of blackart autocorrect trickery or if, after a 30+ year wait, a fix was issued by MS.

In what, Office 365? (What month?)

LibreOffice is still plagued with it, but they've been working on some autocorrect bugs lately. Maybe it might get squashed.

After any Smarten Punctuation, I always just do a search for things like:

”— (RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTE + EM DASH)
—“ (EM DASH + LEFT DOUBLE QUOTE)

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

That HORIZONTAL BAR + "quotation dash" character is missing on a lot of fonts...

I know that, but my 'some fonts' contained an implied 'where horizontal-bar exists'

BR

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I know that, but my 'some fonts' contained an implied 'where horizontal-bar exists'

lol, well next you're going to say NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE... where it exists!

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

This recently got fixed in Word, but I'm not sure if it was by me with a bit of blackart autocorrect trickery or if, after a 30+ year wait, a fix was issued by MS.

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

In what, Office 365? (What month?)

Yes - which would be Word 2019 - no idea which month, MS installs new versions of Office 365 without so much as a '… and thank your mother for the rabbits', let alone a list of improvements and fixes. But on reflection, it may have come via the new version of the Transtools addin I installed recently.

IIRC the quote is initially shown as a straight quote and gets changed to a curly when you press the space bar or Enter (which is off-putting), that makes me think its in auto-correct or it's a macro. I've been typing quote, backspace, ctrl+alt+num-, and End for almost 30 years, no doubt I'll continue to do so.

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

lol, well next you're going to say NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE... where it exists!

When I wrote that post - to Jellby - I was wondering what a Spanish printer might do.

BR