Inspiring

Question

Keep straight quotes straight, curly quotes curly when placing Word copy

Forum|Forum|6 months ago
September 25, 2025
3 replies
567 views

My workflow involves editing in Word, applying styles in Word, then placing copy in InDesign. We use Typographer quotes generally but need straight quotes for foot and inch markers. Previously, I discovered that if you turn off Typographer quotes while placing copy, straight quotes remained straight and curly quotes remained curly. (If Typogrpher Quotes was turned on, all quotes would end up curly.) But this no longer works. Straight quotes now import as curly even with Typographer Quotes turned off. This means a lot of extra tedious search/replace work after we've already got everything just right in Word.

Anyone know how to fix this--or another way to achieve my desired result?

Thanks

Jim

Joel Cherney

Community Expert

But this no longer works. Straight quotes now import as curly even with Typographer Quotes turned off.

What changed, then? Are you saying something like "InDesign 20.3 respected the Use Typographer's Quotes setting, but 20.5 doesn't"? That would be a bug report, and I imagine that the way to fix it would be to file that bug report and then wait (...) for the developers to fix it. Or did something else change, upstream from InDesign? Maybe a change in working methods, or just an update to a newer version of Word?

If this is happening as a result of something changing within InDesign, and you don't particularly want to wait for the developers to see your report and implement a fix, then a solution like Randy's makes some sense. I prefer to fix such things upstream in Word, and to avoid extensive changes to copy in InDesign, so I have some tools and methods that basically look like Randy's suggestion, but a) I do 'em with Visual Basic in Word, and b) they're engineered to ensure that foot and inch markers are encoded as single and double primes, in Word, as per Bob's advice.

I am going to bet that you don't necessarily know What It Is That Changed, and furthermore I'm going to bet that the Thing was probably something related to your InDesign preferences, and also that you probably haven't recently looked in the Import Options dialog that you can get when you're placing a Word file:

If that isn't what you are looking for, then could you 1) tell us what version of InDesign you are using now, 2) tell us what version of InDesign you were using before, and maybe 3) post a sample Word file for us to place in our own installs of InDesign that exhibits the forced-curly-quote behavior when you place it in InDesign.

J

JimAustinAuthor

Inspiring

Joel, many good (educated) guesses here. I'll start out by saying that I've experienced several instances over several years of InDesign behavior changing for no apparent reason. One recent example is that when I choose to export a pdf (Cmd-E), InDesign seems to decide randomly whether to open the Print Export or Interactive dialog box. This has only been happening for the last few months; previously it did whatever I'd done most recently. So yes, I think something has changed with InDesign. I don't think it's directly a matter of Preferences because Preferences haven't changed in any directly relevant way. However, I have had the experience in the past of deleting some InDesign file and proper function being restored. But if it is something to do with preferences (or something I can fix by deleting some file), then that would be the best solution I can imagine.

One thing you're not right: I have recently looked at Import Options, and I don't see anything obviously relevant.

I'd love to make our Word-based workflow more bulletproof. Would you be willing to share more about what you've done with Visual Basic?

Thanks

Jim

Joel Cherney

Community Expert

I've experienced several instances over several years of InDesign behavior changing for no apparent reason.

[...]

yes, I think something has changed with InDesign. I don't think it's directly a matter of Preferences because Preferences haven't changed in any directly relevant way. However, I have had the experience in the past of deleting some InDesign file and proper function being restored.

Yep, corrupt preferences are a very likely cause for something like "my Use Typographer's Quotes setting is not being respected" and the some-InDesign-file-you-deleted to restore proper function would most likely be either your preferences or your font cache. You may have not changed your prefs in any relevant way, but that doesn't mean that InDesign's decades-old plugin-based architecture might have corrupted your prefs in an "indirectly relevant" way. Not something that you did, but something that happened without user intervention.

In your shoes, I'd start with a preferences refresh, which will unfortunately remove all of your UI customizations, which panels are open, et cetera. You can back up your prefs before doing the reset & restore them afterwards. I'd suggest consulting the "Resetting InDesign" section of Mike Witherell's general InDesign troubleshooting post.

One thing you're not right: I have recently looked at Import Options, and I don't see anything obviously relevant.

So in the GIF I posted where I demonstrated the Import Options dialog - is the "Use Typographer's Quotes" box checked or unchecked? You can test the functionality here by placing a Word file in an empty doc with the the box checked, then placing the exact same Word file in a second doc, but with that setting unchecked.

I'd love to make our Word-based workflow more bulletproof. Would you be willing to share more about what you've done with Visual Basic?

In my case, it's kind of client-specific. Much like Randy's method of finding any quote marks that trail after a digit, but based on the kind of repetitious materials that my clients send me. Happy to share some generic VBA for automating find and replace in Word, if that would be helpful to you.

Randy Hagan

Community Expert

Maybe you can streamline this a bit with some global cues with Find/Change features:

1. With the InDesign layout open, select the Edit>Find/Change... menu command to open the Find/Change panel.

2. Use conventions to define global changes more precisely:

3. Just to the right of the Find what: edit box you'll see a small Ampersand (@) and a right-pointing triangle.

a. Clicking on it opens a flyaway menu. Select the Wildcards>Any Digit menu command.

b. You'll see that the Find what: edit box will contain the characters ^9.

c. Click on that ampersand (@) and right-pointing triangle again. Select the Quotation Marks>Single Right Quotation Mark menu command.

d. You'll see the Find what: edit box now contains the characters ^9^]. This is a pretty refined definition for your foot-measures with typographer quotation marks

4. Now to define the replacement in the Change to: edit box:

a. We already know how to define Any Digit in Find/change speak, so if you want, you can just type in the carat symbol (Shift+6 on the typewriter side of your keyboard, then 9). Or you can use the Ampersand (@) button and select the Wildcards>Any Digit menu command, if you prefer.

b. Click on that ampersand (@) and right-pointing triangle off the Change to: edit box. Select the Quotation Marks>Straight Single Quotation Mark (Apostrophe) menu command.

c. You'll see the Find what: edit box now contains the characters ^9^'. This is a pretty refined definition for your foot-measures with straight quotation marks. If you've got it right, it'll look like the illustration below:

That will replace every instance of any number followed by a single quotation mark with that same number with a straight quotation mark. By default, it will do that through your entire document. If you want to do that with multiple documents, like, say, files for each of the six chapters of your larger document and the separate table of contents, first open all those files within InDesign, then change the Search: options box from Document to All Documents, as show in the illustration at right. Then you can do this for all 7 documents you have open within InDesign. Foot-measures are about to be corrected.

Now for the last part. To minimize proofing, you can use the Find Next, then the Change buttons to apply your changes on a case-by-case basis. Which lets you see each instance and apply the change, or click the Find Next button again to skip on to the next one. Or, you can replace things globally by using the Change All button, then proof for the rare chance that character swap has gone awry.

Lather-Rinse-Repeat with the ^9 for Any Digit followed by the glyphs for Double Right Quotation Marks (^}) and Double Straight Quotation Marks (^') respectively to fix your inch-measures the same way.

Hope this helps,

Randy

J

JimAustinAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks again for this--but it isn't working for me. I think I've followed your suggestions carefully. First, I noticed--and it is not surprising--that the wildcard "any digit" isn't defined in the "Change to" box. So I did what you said and typed ^9 instead--unsure about this, since ^9 means "any digit" and not the particular digit you just found. But never mind. I tried it--the first occurrence was 7.1"--(I'm doing inches, not feet)-- and the resulting change was:

7.^9"

So it replaced the "any digit" with the literal ^9.

Jim

BobLevine

Community Expert

Use single and double prime glyphs for foot and inches instead of quotes.

J

JimAustinAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks, but how would that work in the context of our Word --> InDesign workflow? "Change the workflow" is a valid answer, though getting InDesign to work the way it once did would be simpler for us.

Jim

BobLevine

Community Expert

Use those glyphs in Word. They should come in just fine when you import the file to InDesign. Why not try it and see?

Alt+8242 is a single prime and alt+8243 is a double prime. If you use those as opposed to straight quotes you shouldn't have any issues using typographers quotes anywhere else.

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