smart(?) quotes (Word XP)

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I have been tearing out my remaining hair trying to AutoCorrect a smart quotes glitch. I am used to typing ‘This is an unfinished sentence … ‘ with a space before the closing quote. If there’s no space, no probs, but with the space Word puts in an opening smart quote, bless it. I have tried all manner of AutoCorrect combinations, starting with replacing the ellipse plus space plus opening quote which Word generates with ellipse plus space plus closing quote. I removed the ellipse AutoCorrect altogether but that didn’t work either. Then I tried three dots replaced by three dots plus non-breaking space, then the three dots plus non breaking space plus opening quote with… you get the idea. Any suggestions apart from a tedious session of Find and Replace which I might forget to do anyway or giving up and replacing xxx with the string I want, which is a clunky workaround. Thanks in advance. I presume the problem relates to having a space in the Replace box followed by a non-alpha character.

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I don’t think AutoCorrect can do this.

How about not typing a space before the closing quote?
Or turning off smart quotes altogether?

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I think the space might be needed for autocorrect to replace the three dots with an ellipsis. How about the key combination dot dot dot space left-arrow single-quote.

StuartR

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It replaces the three dots with an ellipsis if you put the quote straight after the three dots. No need for the space, and you get the closing quote. If you really want a space before the quote, it might be easiest to type the quote then go back and type the space, then go to the right again to get to the end. So go dot, dot, dot, quote, left arrow, space. But then you have to use End or right arrow presses to get past the final quote again. If that seems tedious and you want this often, you could do it just once while using the macro recording facility, then have a toolbar button or a key combination to run the macro.

Ian

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This very question came up on the Word-PC list last week. Here was Bonnie Granat’s answer:

1. Ctrl+apostrophe key.
2. Apostrophe key.

You can get single quotation marks and doubles to face any way you want —
for the reverse direction: Ctrl+tilde and then either the single or double
quotation mark key.

Pam Caswell

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