1. markdienekes

    markdienekes New Member

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    Curved to Straight Quotes

    Discussion in 'Writing Software and Hardware' started by markdienekes, Jun 29, 2012.

    Does anyone know how to do this quickly using star office or open office?

    It would be greatly appreciated, as I'm really struggling (I can't find straight quotes on my keyboard... is it just two apostrophes?). :(

    Thanks for your time!
     
  2. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    it should be the key immediately to the left of the right side 'enter' key... if it's not, then you don't have an english language keyboard...

    the quotation mark is on top of the apostrophe and you have to press the 'shift' key at the same time, like you do to get a capital letter...
     
  3. markdienekes

    markdienekes New Member

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    Thanks for the help, though my keyboard is set up a little differently, (it is a UK English keyboard though!)
    directly on top of my apostrophe key is an @ symbol... and immediately to the left of the enter is the ~# key and the }] key...

    It's strange because I can see on keyboards the key you mean, but mine doesn't have that one... it has the @ on it instead!
     
  4. lallylello

    lallylello New Member

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    That's odd - I have an English keyboard, but my quotation mark (") is above the 2.
    Unless Mammamaia meant an American English keyboard. ;)
    :p
     
  5. markdienekes

    markdienekes New Member

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    That's where mine is, and it only does curly quotes :(

    Have the British been cursed by defective keyboards?!
     
  6. lallylello

    lallylello New Member

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    British? Defective? As if!
    We get double quotation marks above the 2 and the apostrophe is the same as a single quotation mark. If you want it to look any different, I think you just have to change font. I'll check and get back to you.
     
  7. lallylello

    lallylello New Member

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    Yep - changing the font changes the appearance of the quotation from super-curly (Curlz font) to super straight (Courier)
    Unless that wasn't what you meant?
     
  8. Estrade

    Estrade New Member

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    Why do you want straight quotes?

    I know sometimes apostrophes come out in the basic form - i.e. not transformed into the font you're using - for some reason.

    I have the same keyboard as you, and in Times New Roman I get the curved quotes and apostrophes, but occasionally, when I have an automatic replace on misspellings of my MC's name as a possessive, for instance, the automatically changed word has a straight apostrophe and I have to change it, to be consistent.

    So, I'll be interested to hear if anyone has an answer to this question, but I'm wondering why you want to change the quotes to straight because you should let the quotes be consistent with your font, otherwise you may end up with things going on behind the scenes in the code, which may cause a formatting problem later for a publisher.

    (So the answer may be to choose a font which has straight quotes anyway.)
     
  9. markdienekes

    markdienekes New Member

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    Indeed, I wasn't aware it was down to font.

    Why I was asking was because BAEN Books want straight quotes, not curly ones... (I'll make a separate document when I do this though!)
     
  10. Estrade

    Estrade New Member

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    So they didn't specify a font, just the quotes? With nothing else to go on, I would assume they meant that they prefer the fonts that have straight quotes. It's probably a sans serif thing. (The plainer, more modern fonts.)
     
  11. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    i had no idea that the british keyboard was any different from the american!... can't imagine why...
     

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