On a computer, you typically use 'straight quotes', whilst in (real) books you mostly find 'curly quotes'.
In both Google Docs and Word you can let the word processor (is anyone still old enough to recognize that expression?) handle it.
0. Test text
I used the following text to test all the conversions below:
“Wait,” she said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, I”—she looked up—“don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, but—” I considered our options.
She shook her head.
“I’d say we—”
“We don’t,” she interrupted me. “Is that clear?”
“Yes, I—I see. Can we—”
“No.”
I lifted my tools, once more thinking of what I would leave behind, and—
Damn. I didn't like it.
“I’d rather…” Now she hesitated. “I'd rather not, you know… But what can we do?”
I knew the answer. “Nothing…”
And so, we waited… and waited…
Note: the reformat issues with em-dash plus double quote only showed up in larger texts, see sections 3 and 4 further down.
1. Where to find the options
Word
I have tested everything on this page using MS Office Home & Student 2021, MS Office Home & Business 2019, and MS Office 365 MSO (a corporate version, 22.08.202)..
Depending on the version of Word the following options may be located in a different place.
1. File / Options / Proofing / AutoCorrect Options
Here you'll find this feature in two different places:
2. Tab AutoFormat As You Type, look for Smart Quotes, and
3. Tab AutoFormat, look for Smart Quotes
Set them both to ON or OFF.
Word bug
Sometimes Word doesn't properly replace stuff. See 'Word bug' on this page.
Google Docs
1. Tools / Preferences / Use Smart Quotes
Suggestion: stick to straight quotes
Unless your editor tells you otherwise, I'd suggest to stick to straight quotes until the final stage. (On the image below: top line is straight, bottom line is curly.)
2. Double hyphens to Em-dash
Em-dash sometimes confuses Word, so let's deal with those first.
In real life, the dash is the shortest, the En-dash a bit longer, and the Em-dash the longest. The hyphen is another symbol, similar to the shortest dash, used to connect two words. (Did you know that not all languages use Em-dash?) Hyphen and dash are often mixed up.
First of all, consider how they look...
It seems Word knows all variants but only uses two, the hypen and the dash (which, in Word, is either an en-dash or an em-dash)... yeah, it doesn't say it's an en-dash or em-dash, it's just called a dash. (WHICH ISN'T a hyphen, I know, I know... For now assume it is, okay?)
Suggestion: stick to double hyphens
At least for now...
What I would like to suggest is to use the double-hyphen -- and either leave it up to your editor / publisher to change it, or (if you're self-publishing) only change it just before publishing.
Replacing double hyphens with Em-dash
If you reach that self-publishing stage, use the following procedure:
1. When in Google Docs, save to a Word document
2. Load your text (the .docx file) in Word
3. On the Ribbon, go to Home, and on the right side you'll find Replace
4. Now enter [-][-] in the Find what box
5. Enter [^][+] in the Replace with box
6. Replace All
3. Change regular Quotes to Curly Quotes, and vice verse - method 1
Now you may already have a document written, but straight and curly quotes are all messed up. There's an easy way to fix it, but (unfortunately) it requires Word and doesn't always work.
In all examples below, [-] means 'enter a dash', [p] means 'enter a p', so, for example, [w][r][i][t][i][n][g][space][i][s][space][h][a][r][d] actually stands for: writing is hard 😏
1. When your original document is in Google Docs, first 'download' the document as .docx (File / Download / .docx)
2. Load your text (the .docx file) in Word
3. File / Options / Proofing / AutoCorrect Options
4. Switch Smart Quotes to either ON or OFF, depending on what you want to do
This option may be listed in more than one place, or in a different place, depending on your version of Word. Mine has it in both 'AutoFormat' as well as 'AutoFormat As You Type'.
5. Close the Word Options window
5. On the Ribbon, go to Home, and on the right side you'll find Replace
6. Now enter ["] in the Find what box
7. Also enter ["] in the Replace with box
8. Replace All
9. Do the same for [']
10. You may need to check any occurance of em-dash followed by a double quote [^][+]["] (use the find tool) to see if it didn't miss any. It often does 😒
Warning: Smart Quotes sometimes fail when they follow an em-dash. It doesn't matter if that's a real em-dash, a double hyphen, enclosed in spaces or not. A possible solution is given in section 4 below.
4. Change regular Quotes to Curly Quotes, method 2
This is experimental, but it seems to work! Use at your own risk...
If word sees an Em-dash followed by a space, it always assumes it indicates the end of a line of text, ie. this will allways trigger the use of opening quotes. By enclosing the em-dash with spaces and redo the double quote formatting it will correct most problems, but leave a number of inccorect --" variants in place.
Those, however, can be fixed with a few search / replace replace actions.
1. Set your autoformat settings2. Replace [^][+] (em-dash) with [space][^][+][space]
3. Replace [“] with [“]
4. Replace [space][^][+][space] with [^][+]
5. Replace [^][+]["][^][p] with [^][+]["][^][p]
6. Replace [^][+]["][space] with [^][+]["][space]
5. Reflow-friendly ellipse and em-dash formatting
I'm not sure if this is neccessary, or if it's smarter to leave such reformatting to your epub processing tool, such as Atticus or in Kindle Create. Use at your own risk.
Notes:
- CMOS suggests a closed, unspaced ellipse, I suggest to use a more e-book friendly [ellipse][space] combo. More here.
- [.][.][.] is not the same as the ellipse [...] in Word!
- The keyboard shortcut for the ellipse [...] is control+alt+period
The following seems to work:
add spaces to ellipses without orphaning double quotes
1. Replace [...] with [...][space] - add a space to every ellipse
2. Replace [...][space][space] with [...][space] - make sure there's only one space after an ellipse
3. Replace [space][^][p] with [^][p] - strip any spaces before paragraph ends
4. Replace [...][space]["][space] with [...]["][space] - fix orphaned quote signs
5. Replace [...][space]["][^][p] with [...]["][^][p] - same
surround emdash with spaces without orphaning double quotes
1. Set your autoformat settings
2. Replace [^][+] with [space][^][+][space] - put space around all em-dashes
3. Replace [space]["][^][p] with ["][^][p] - fix orphaned quote signs
4. Replace [space][^][+][space][“][space] with [space][^][+][“][space] - same
5. Replace [space][^][p] with [^][p] - strip any spaces before paragraph ends
optional: avoid orphaned em-dashes with and without quotes
If you format your text for both ebook and print, then you may not like the last line of a paragraph to look like —" all by itself. In that case, also do this:
6. Replace [space][^][+][^][p] with [^][+][^][p]
7. Replace [space][^][+]["][^][p] with [^][+]["][^][p]
6. Notes to self (you can ignore this part 😏)
1. Look for Sweets' and other names ending on an s
2. Check if the right styles are applied
3. Make sure # is centered
4. Americans don't use 'whilst', 'trousers'...
More
- Converting and formatting manuscripts
- Closed versus Spaced Ellipses, and spaces around EM-dashes
- All writing related posts (including those less relevant)
- Writing Essentials
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