Participating Frequently

Question

How to globally change straight double quotes to curly open and close?

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
July 16, 2012
3 replies
49403 views

I am editing with InDesign (5.5) some documents created by others. I suddenly noticed that the double quote marks were straight, not curly, in one document and Find/Change does not seem to offer and option to distiguish the open (left) double quote mark from the right (close) when starting with double straight quotes. Any suggestions?

And--unrelated--why is so hard to get to a page where you can actually post a question?

Thanks!

Jill

T

Thomas24144043j68r

Participant

Hello,

In InDesign how can I globally change quoted content currently punctuated with SINGLE open and closed quote marks to DOUBLE open and closed quote marks? (without undoing apostrophes). Thank you very much in advance.

S

samar02

Participating Frequently

Since the position of a double quotation mark determines its shape, it is easiest to use GREP with Find/Change. You can (1) find a straight quotation mark at the beginning of a word/phrase and change it to left quotation marks, and then (2) find a straight quotation mark at the end of a word/phrase and change it to right quotation marks.

(1)

Find what:

~"([\l\u\)[:punct:]])

This finds a straight quotation mark in front of any character or punctuation.

Change to:

\x{201C}$1

This puts a left quotation marks in front of what was behind the straight quotation mark.

(2)

Find what:

([\l\u\)[:punct:]])~"

This finds a straight quotation mark behind any character or punctuation.

Change to:

$1\x{201D}

This puts a left quotation mark behind what was behind the straight quotation mark.

I would find/change the first hits one at a time, and when you are confident that it works for your documents, go ahead and Change All.

S

SnowshoeLaneLOLAuthor

Participating Frequently

Samar02--

Perfect. I had tried using an "any character" wildcard, but that didn't work at all. I knew I needed to distinquish left and right (and possibly use GREP to do it), but I didn't know how to construct the pattern.

Thanks so much for the detailed information--I'm off to put it to the test. You guys are the best!

Jill

S

samar02

Participating Frequently

This will probably be better:

(1)

Find what:

~"([\w]([[:punct:]])?)

This finds a straight quotation mark in front of any letter or digit that may be followed by a punctuation character.

Change to:

\x{201C}$1

This puts a left quotation marks in front of what was behind the straight quotation mark.

(2)

Find what:

([\w]([[:punct:]])?)~"

This finds a straight quotation mark behind any letter or digit that may be followed by a punctuation character.

Change to:

$1\x{201D}

This puts a left quotation mark behind what was behind the straight quotation mark.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

First thing, if you open the file and go to preferences (Edit > Prefernces... on Windows, InDesign > Preferences... on Mac), is the Enable Typographers Quotes box checked in the Type section?

S

SnowshoeLaneLOLAuthor

Participating Frequently

That I did figure out from the HElp files--but (unfortunately) it won't change the quote marks already in the file. But, I learned something new!

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Find & Replace

Find " and replace all with "

Find ' and replace all with '

It will detect opening and closing quotations automatically.

In German you would have to take care as the closing apostrophe ‘ and the missing letter sign ’ are different and therefore you have to watch all ' replacements by hand.

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