Placing German text looses correct German close-quote

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
April 10, 2025
1 reply
309 views

I'm placing German text into InDesign. The text is coming from Word and has the German language setting applied to it. However, when placed I'm constantly running into the problem of the German close quote facing the wrong way. So for instance, instead of coming in as „Weltschmerz“ (where the close quote is the equivalent of an English open quote mark) it comes in as „Weltschmerz" (where the close quote is the same as an English close quote). I'm certain my German friends don't have to deal with this...they'd be jumping up and down. So what am I doing wrong?

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

What are your settings in Preferences - and definition of corresponding ParaStyles in your INDD document?

J

JamieMcKeeAuthor

Inspiring

Can you be more specific? Which Preference setting are you asking about, and which definition of my ParaStyle? I can tell you that, because I'm often placing Word files that contain both German and English text, the Language of the ParaStyle is initially English. However, after placing in InDesign and I'm scanning over the text, I'll apply a similar ParaStyle to German text that switches the Language to German: 2006 Reform to full paragraphs and will apply a local override of "German: 2006 Reform" to German words in otherwise English paragraphs.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Preferences > Dictionary > German 2006

take care to use Duden. But this has no impact on your problem.

when text is imorted InDesign remembers the quotes from imported files. Microsoft makes closing German quotations always wrong. You have to find & replace " with ", change all and the whole document is repaired in a second.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded