Search for single quotation marks

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I have a document from a client in which she often improperly uses single quotation marks when she should be using double quotation marks. I’d like to do a search for all the places where she has used the single marks. I’m assuming I would use wildcards, but don’t know how to phrase it.

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You should be able to do a “find-and-replace” with your word processor for each occurrence of a single quote mark. But you’ll need to verify each one found, for the following reasons:
* Some of the single quote marks will be apostrophes. There is no way to distinguish between an apostrophe and a single quote mark.
* Some of the single quote marks are for quotes inside of quotes. You wouldn’t want them to use double quote marks.
* Do you want to use plain double quote marks, or the “begin” and “end” curved double quote marks?

Perhaps there is a grammar checker which could correctly pull off an automatic find-and-replace. But I’m not sure if grammar checkers are that good.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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You could use two wildcard Finds, one where:
Find = [!^s ][‘^0145^0146][!a-z]
and one where:
Find = [^s ][‘^0145^0146]
together, these will find only single-quotes/apostrophes at the beginning or end of a word.

The alternative is to use a single wildcard Find, where:
Find = [‘^0145^0146]
or a single ordinary Find, where:
Find = ‘
but this will also find apostrophes within words (e.g.as in: “I’m not sure if grammar checkers are that good”).

You may also be interested in:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//136549-Need-macro-for-quotation-marks?p=793859&viewfull=1#post793859
or:
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//170423-Macro-for-Unmatched-Quote-Marks?p=1014056&viewfull=1#post1014056

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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together, these will find only single-quotes/apostrophes at the beginning or end of a word.

There are cases where an apostrophe does occur at the end of a word: The players’ uniforms are blue.

I’m not sure how you can distinguish between a single quote mark and an apostrophe, unless the single quote mark is curved. But often, single quote marks are straight / plain, i.e. the same character as that which is used for an apostrophe.

You also need to consider that the document might contain accent marks (like an apostrophe which leans to the right). Accent marks might be used both for single quote marks and for apostrophes. (If they are used for accents, you will have a combination character rather than a single character, so you should be able to ignore the accents.)

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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There are cases where an apostrophe does occur at the end of a word: The players’ uniforms are blue.[/quote]
I am fully aware of that – and I never suggested the Find wouldn’t find them. In fact, by referring to them as single-quotes/apostrophes, I explicitly anticipated that.

I’m not sure how you can distinguish between a single quote mark and an apostrophe, unless the single quote mark is curved.[/quote]
I wasn’t trying to.

You also need to consider that the document might contain accent marks (like an apostrophe which leans to the right). Accent marks might be used both for single quote marks and for apostrophes. (If they are used for accents, you will have a combination character rather than a single character, so you should be able to ignore the accents.)

Those, too, are for the user to assess.

Please note that I never suggested either Find be used with Replace, let alone Replace All. If they’re just used as a Find – with the ‘Reading Highlight’ option, the potential problems will all be highlighted.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Thanks!

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