e-Formatting Gems for Novel Writers #3 ~ Quote Marks

Making apostrophes & speech marks

consistent in Word:

It is not unusual for a Word manuscript to have a mixture of “Smart Quotes” and "Straight Quotes" (curly quotes and straight quotes) when it has been made using more than one computer – especially if you have used an editing team. So we first need to decide whether to make them all Smart or Straight.

General preference is for Smart (curly) Quotes, which will need a couple more checks and fixes for backward apostrophes/quotes once made consistent – there will be more information about fixing these in the next article.

We will approach the method of making them all Straight first:

In the Ribbon at the top of the document, go to File – Options

Then Proofing – AutoCorrect Options

Then AutoFormat and uncheck this box:

Then AutoFormat As You Type and uncheck this box:

Once both of these boxes are unchecked you click the OK button.

To make all apostrophes and speech marks Smart (curly) you check (rather than uncheck) the two boxes above and then click the OK button.

When this is done it is a simple matter of using Find and Replace to make them all consistent. With your document back in the Home tab (in the ribbon) press the F5 key on your keyboard and type a speech mark into both Find and Replace fields as below – then select Replace All to make them all consistent:

We then do the same with apostrophes and the tidying is complete:

If you have opted for Smart (curly) Quotes, the next article will show you how to correct any backward apostrophes and speech marks that Word places as default.

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