Change straight quotes to smart quotes (FM2022)

Question

I've converted a 60,000+ manuscript from a plain text editor to FrameMaker. In the plain text document both the opening and closing quotation marks (around dialogue) use the " (double quotes). How can I convert them into the appropriate “ (smart opening quotation) and ” (smart closing quotation) respectively?

Straight Quotes are turned off in my Preferences, so the smart quotes appear when I manually type them in the FM document (needless to say I'm not keen on doing this manually.)

Barb Binder · Accepted Answer

I use the following expression in Find/Change. (Save before you run it!)

Find:

"(.+?)"

Enable the Regular Expression radio button

Change:

\`$1\'

Note: FrameMaker will change the \` (backslash left apostrope) to an open curly quote and the \' (backslash right apostrope) to a close curly quote after by run the find/change. You can also just cut/paste the curly quotes into the change field.

~Barb

Winfried Reng · Answer

Hi,Just use Search and Replace.For the closing double-quote search for a straight double-quote and a space or punctuation mark and replace by a typographic double-quote and a space or punctuation mark. You can test with regular expressions. I do not have access to FrameMaker today, but you can try this:Search for: "([ ,.:;!?])Replace: typographic double-quote$1It could be that you have to escape e.g. the dot with \. I would have to test this myself.Then similar for the opening double-quote.And of course there can be double-quotes for inch characters.Please make a backup copy and test this very thoroughly, before you do a Change All!Best regards, Winfried

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