Forcing a quotation mark style

[Hoods7070]

Hi

(Sorry if this has already been discussed elsewhere, but I couldn't find an answer to my question in another thread.)

Please can someone tell me how (or indeed, if) I can set/force quotation mark style/s in Sigil! i.e. opt to use straight rather than angled or curly quotation marks or vice versa. At present, no matter what I try, my keyboard input is straight, vertical quotation marks, regardless of font, font-style, CSS etc.

Many thanks!

[DiapDealer]

You don't control this with styling. If you want curly quotes, you must enter curly quotes. You can use Sigil's special character feature to enter them. Or you can copy/paste from your system's character map utility. Or you can use entities, or alt-key codes.

There's some utility programs that will convert straight quotes to their typographic equivalents. Some of them are quite good, but none are perfect.

[Toxaris]

Don't forget, a curly quote is a different character than a straight quote. The meaning is also different, as straight quotes are also symbols used length. It is a different as an character 'a' and 'A'. It is unfortunate that the keyboards don't allow direct typing of curly quotes.
The 'issue' is that we are spoiled by some wordprocessors how try to do it automatically. Let me stress 'try'.

[mrmikel]

You might try getting curly quotes through using search and replace, with leading space meaning curly left and following space meaning curly right. But this is not going to be perfect..like periods, commas, etc. The aggravation level will depend on how many quotes there are and how creative the author got with unusual uses of the " sign. I would not try a replace all myself. But if you choose to live dangerously or excitingly, make a copy with another name to play with. That way you waste your time rather than your sanity if it blows up some way.

[Hoods7070]

Thanks, all. I suspected there was no one-stroke fix. I just thought it was perhaps my ignorance, and hoped there might be.

As it is, I type in any missing or incorrect quotes as "straight" quotes when editing, then search/replace everything back to curly quotes as the last editing effort. It works fine, and is second nature now, but it does seem a long-winded way of doing things.

[Ripplinger]

As you're doing your corrections, why not enter the correct smart quote to begin with instead of the straight quotes and then having to go back? Just open the "Insert special character" from the top menu and move it off to the side to click on which quote you need as you're editing.

Or if you have a keyboard like the Logitech G11 or G15, set 4 of the Gkeys for the curly quotes.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hoods7070

Thanks, all. I suspected there was no one-stroke fix. I just thought it was perhaps my ignorance, and hoped there might be.

The way that I do it (although this is prone to mistakes), is running the EPUB through the Calibre plugin: Modify EPUB. I uncheck everything besides the "smarten punctuation" checkbox.

I assume Calibre's new "Polish Books" can do the same thing (although I have not tested the "smarten punctuation" using Polish Books).

From there, I use this Regex to catch SOME of the potential curly quote mistakes:

Search:

(“[^”\r\n]*)</p>\s+<p>

Replace (a space is after the 1):

\1

From there, you must just do VERY CLOSE analysis of the curly quotes to catch any further errors. Also making sure to check the "apostrophes" (right single quote) closely.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

It is unfortunate that the keyboards don't allow direct typing of curly quotes.

Macs have two keystroke for them, but that's because Macs don't use the alt key for anything but modifying keyboard input. PCs have always used the alt key for other things (like the old Open Apple and Closed Apple keys) and never adopted it.

[Hoods7070]

Thanks for your input, everyone. I guess I'll just stick with the way I do things now since I'm used to that.

[Toxaris]

Quite frankly, I usually end up dumping it in Word and do the quotes there and run my macro's (or add-in currently). Fix the quotations and a lot more (missing quotes anyone?). Export it to HTML (not via standard Word of course) and recreate the book. Takes a bit more time, but solves a whole lot of additional errors.

[Steadyhands]

I've used this series of search & replaces to convert from single curly quotes to double curly quotes. Saved as a saved search in Sigil an then load all/ replace all. Use with caution until you are sure it's doing what you expect. It's not perfect but gets most of them - expects the text to be decent punctuation in the first place.

Name=Quotes
Left Quote
Find=<p class="calibre(\d+)\">‘
Replace=<p class="calibre\1">“
Left quote2
Find=(\p{P}) ‘
Replace=\1 “
Right Quote
Find=(\p{P})’</p>
Replace=\1”</p>
Right Quote2
Find=(\p{P})’
Replace=\1”

The Right Quote2 have a space after the end of find and replace.

[pdurrant]

Whatever automated system you put in place, it will still need checking. ’Tis the way of the world.

[Hoods7070]

Well, since from the discussion above it seems my way is as easy and efficient as any other, and not remotely complicated, I think I'll stick with it, bar some day finding a way to force my keyboard to type "smart quotes" as I go.

i.e. a) edit in Sigil correcting quotes - using keyboard straight quotes as needed, then b) converting ALL quotes to straight via search/replace, c) using Book Polish with smart quotes checked - alll quotes are fixed to curly quotes. Three simple steps and it's done, so I suppose there was no point whining in the first place.

[JSWolf]

I find the best way to do it is once you have the ePub made, toss it into Calibre and smarten punctuation (no converting allowed). Then open file location, copy the file and put it where you want to work on it. Then you can fix anything that's wrong in the smartening.

[mrmikel]

There are keyboard shortcuts assigned to clips by number. You could put the curly quotes in two clips and use the keyboard shortcuts. I will admit that Ctrl-Alt-0 is not the easiest thing, but it is an option.