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.
Thank you for reading this article.
