[Aramas]

Hello all, I've just gotten my first Mac (an iBook), and I've transferred a document from Word into TextEdit. The problem I'm having is that the transferred stuff has quotation marks that are directional - ie at the beginning of a sentence they're like inverted '9's, whereas at the end they're like '9's. However, anything that I subsequently type has quotation marks that are just vertical slashes. I've tried selecting the entire text, changing fonts and then changing it back to Times New Roman, but it doesn't change the quotation marks. It's rather annoying since it's a novel in progress, and that kind of discontinuity is unacceptable.

Are MS fonts different from Apple's? If so, how can I change the whole document to make it consistent?

[CharlesS]

The issue isn't the fonts - it's that the curly quote marks (“ and ”) are actually different characters than the straight quote marks ("). The reason the text you have so far uses the curly quotes is probably because it came from MS Word, which has a "smart quotes" feature that replaces quote marks you type with curly quotes automatically. Unfortunately, TextEdit has no similar feature like this, but you can type the quote marks regardless - the left quote mark is option-[ and the right quote mark is option-shift-[. If you want to change a bunch of quote marks in your document at once, you can use Find and Replace to do so.

[Aramas]

Aha! Thanks. I gave it a try and it works. I guess I'll have to get used to writing without training wheels. I always hated how MS software overrides the user as a matter of course. I turn off as much of the automatic stuff as I can find, but there's so much that I'm not even aware of!

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Aramas:
Aha! Thanks. I gave it a try and it works. I guess I'll have to get used to writing without training wheels. I always hated how MS software overrides the user as a matter of course. I turn off as much of the automatic stuff as I can find, but there's so much that I'm not even aware of!

Fair enough. I myself prefer having the automatic curly quotes, as it's convenient, especially on Windows where there is no option key (making the only way to manually type the curly quotes to either go through the character palette each time or memorize a four-digit ALT code).

[Rickster]

IIRC there are some programs out there that let you add automated smart quotes to all Cocoa applications... can't remember any names, though.

[holygoat]

In my Services menu, I have Convert > Smart Quotes (Cmd-"). See if you've got it installed, in which case you can select all your normal-quotes text, and hit Cmd-" to switch to smart quotes. It can also switch back!

[Aramas]

Originally posted by holygoat:
In my Services menu, I have Convert > Smart Quotes (Cmd-"). See if you've got it installed, in which case you can select all your normal-quotes text, and hit Cmd-" to switch to smart quotes. It can also switch back!

I don't have a 'convert' option in my services menu. Can anyone point me to a site that covers extensions for TextEdit?

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by holygoat:
In my Services menu, I have Convert > Smart Quotes (Cmd-"). See if you've got it installed, in which case you can select all your normal-quotes text, and hit Cmd-" to switch to smart quotes. It can also switch back!

Don't have it, so it must be third party.

See if you can find out what third-party service you have installed that does this, because it sounds handy.

[Aramas]

I think i found it. It's called 'WordService' by Devon Technologies and it's freeware

They also have a bunch of other odds and ends.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Aramas:
I think i found it. It's called 'WordService' by Devon Technologies and it's freeware

They also have a bunch of other odds and ends.

Thanks!