I use Microsoft Works word processor, and sometimes when I'm writing, my apostrophe's and paraenthacies come out backwards. (In case I just butchered those spellings, the ' and the "" sometimes go the wrong way.) LOL Anyway, is there a setting I should change, or a reason for this? I'm going to have to go through all of it to double check thus far, so I'm waiting to do a good edit on the whole thing, but I have a bit to go, and wanted to save myself some trouble if there's way to stop it. (I'm dyslexic, maybe my computer is too. haha Just kidding)
You spelt apostrophe right. "s are speech marks, parentheses are ( ) What do you mean they're coming out backwards? Do you mean they're pointing towards the word they're next to? Because they're supposed to do that =P In some fonts (like this one) they're just little marks but other fonts have them curly and they point towards the thing in the quotes or inverted commas.
I don't know that program as I have MS Office, but isn't there a "help" tab of some sort? If so, I'd click on it and then type in: apostrophe, and see if it gives info about the positioning (?) problem of the apostrophes.
Sorry, I wasn't paying attention to what I was typing, I was trying to ask while I had a toddler screaming, and I wanted to see if I could get help before I came back to type some more. My bad. I used the wrong word. Anyway, when in dialouge, they aren't pointing to the correct words. They curve in the wrong direction. It's strange, I can't figure out why. I know how to use them properly, and I am, but there must be a glitch. I'll check out the help tab. Thanks!!!
^This is how it renders for me, for double quotes, and it's correct. If you prefer, there is an option for replacing straight quotes with curly quotes (smart quotes), that you can check or uncheck. How to change that setting depends on the version of Word you are using. You should be able to find out how by entering double quotes in your Word Help, and looking through the results that come up.
when that happens, it's usually because we've not put a space between the enclosed word and the one before or after... so, if you type like'this' the first one will be backwards... all you have to do is backspace, to remove it, then add a space and try again...
This happens sometimes when you forget to "close quotes" at the end of a phrase that is supposed to begin and end with quotation marks (either ' or "). The reason this happens is that Word is automatically deciding that what you mean is to put the whole thing (maybe an entire paragraph) in quotes. Here's an example (although you understand this is not in Word) so I can't really demonstrate entirely (with curly quotation marks and all that): **** "Give me a break, Juie said. "Oh, c'mon, Julie. Don't have to be so obtuse." **** Okay. Now, here, if you'll notice I "forgot" to put an end quote in the first line after "break." See that? So, what happens is (in Word) it'll think that the open quote that begins the next sentence is actually at the end of your previous piece of dialogue, and it'll "fix" it for you by putting the quotation mark turned backward (because the stupid WORD WIZARD thinks he knows you made a mistake). (Just one of the bazillions of bugaboos about Word.). I think somebody said elsewhere that you can turn off the curly quotes (which you should anyway, at least before you submit it via internet anyway), and that way, you won't be able to notice. But leaving them on and finding them wrong will give you a big clue that you overlooked ending a previous quote somewhere earlier in your manuscript.
AH HA! This was the problem. In the places it was happening, it was on words I had changed and I needed to delete the whole word and make sure I started over giving it spaces in the first place, and it fixed it. (In quiet a few spots, but nothing too major. I was typing way too fast today, so I had some typos to fix anyway.) Thank you, it was driving me nuts. Now, I'm off to make them non-curly.
