Inspiring

Question

How to convert straight quotes to smart quotes (or set as default)?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
May 11, 2018
3 replies
4920 views

I'm using DW CS6 and looking for a way to convert all straight quote marks to curly smart ones. Or a preference to force them. I'm not pasting in text from anywhere else.

All the posts I've found on the subject seem to be going the other way: turning smart quotes into straight ones!

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

Assuming you're using quotes inside <blockquote> tags as you should, you can use the CSS before and after pseudo-classes to automatically insert your curly quotes at the beginning and end of your block quotation text.

CSS example:

blockquote:before {content:"\201C"; left:0; top:30px;}

blockquote:after {content:"\201D"; right:0; bottom:0;}

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

B

benwiggyAuthor

Inspiring

That's good to know, thanks. However, entire quoted paragraphs are not the only use of the marks. There's simple apostrophes, and quoted words within a paragraph.

Obviously, I wouldn't want to use smart quotes for things like string delimiters in an actual scripting language, because obviously it's a different character, but there's no reason why HTML shouldn't parse ’ correctly.

If I type ">" in Design View, Dreamweaver adds > to my code. Same for &. If I type a curly apostrophe in Design View, it just adds the character to the HTML. I kind of expected more.

WolfShade

Legend

That's because the "smart quotes" create so many problems. It's one of Micro$oft's "better ideas that don't work". There is not full browser support, for them, AFAIK.

Not to be snarky, but I cannot imagine any scenario whereby smart quotes would actually be preferred over standard quotes.

V/r,

^ _ ^

B

benwiggyAuthor

Inspiring

I'm not sure that smart quotes are an MS idea, are they? If there's an HTML code for a left quote, then browsers should support it, or not be compliant surely?

The main reason for preferring them is that they don't look hideous.

I'm guessing the answer is 'no'. I'll have to try some grep patterns and see what happens.

WolfShade

Legend

It may or may not be Micro$oft. I first experienced them in Word, long before I saw them anywhere else, so it isn't far-fetched to assume.

We built a customized CMS for a customer who regularly copies/pastes from Word documents, and we finally had to write a filter to replace them with standard quotes before inserting the content into the database because the smart quotes kept screwing up the pages. Sometimes the browser would display a smart quote as some odd looking ASCII character, and sometimes everything after the first smart quote would be cut off (it would be in the View Source, but the browser wouldn't parse/display it.) So, please forgive my abhorrence of the smart quote.

V/r,

^ _ ^

pziecina

Legend

The only way to do this in html is to insert the character code -

left single quote ‘ ‘
right single quote (and apostrophe) ’ ’
left double quote “ “
right double quote ” ”

The reason for this not being an option to turn on/off, is because html, css and javascript also use straight quotes, and smart quotes (typographers quotes) would be flagged as an error.

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benwiggyAuthor

Inspiring

Yes, those are the HTML codes, but that doesn't tell me how to globally convert from one to another. I would have hoped that Design mode would allow smart quotes, while Code view would do straight.

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