Arbitrary Straight and Curly Apostrophes

[Eamon]

I am attempting to include both curly apostrophes for
posessive text, i.e. Robert's book, as well as straight
apostrophes for feet, i.e. 12'.

I have turned off both AutoCorrect features that would
turn straight to curly. I have hard coded the apostrophes
with ASCII codes (0146 for curly, 039 for straight).

I use Windows 2000 Version 5 (Build 2195: SP3) with Word
97-SR2.

Problem: WYSIWYG is correct, distilling a PDF is correct,
however printing arbitrarily causes incorrect apostrophes
(some straights print as curly, some curlies print as
straight).

Anyone know how to resolve this?

Thanks

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Some printers automatically substitute curly for straight apostrophes (some
HP LaserJets do this). Instead of using straight apostrophes and quotes for
feet and inches, I use the prime and double prime characters (glyphs 2032
and 2032, in the General Punctuation subset, in many Unicode fonts or
characters 162 and 178 in the Symbol font). I have assigned keyboard
shortcuts for them for ease of insertion, and they look much nicer than
straight quotes.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word

 

[Eamon]

Thanks Suzanne ... that makes a great deal of sense. If
the apostrophes are giving me trouble ... don't use
apostrophes!

Man: Doctor, it hurts when I go like this.
Doctor: Don't "go like that"

However, I am unable to follow your directions. It
appears that the font I am using (Arial, not Arial
Unicode) will not accept the glyph numbers you provided.

I couldn't find a 'prime' symbol in the symbols I have ...
just a straight apostrophe.

Do I have a Punctuation Subset? I couldn't find it.

I tried ASCII but that didn't solve it. Is there an ACII
code for 'prime'?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I find the glyphs in exactly the same place in Arial (as expected, since the
Unicode glyphs are universal across fonts). To find the General Punctuation
subset, in the Insert Symbol dialog, scroll through the Subset list.
Possibly you don't have Unicode versions of the Windows core fonts (but you
should be able to download them). You absolutely do have the characters in
the Symbol font, however.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word

 

[jallan]

I am attempting to include both curly apostrophes for
posessive text, i.e. Robert's book, as well as straight
apostrophes for feet, i.e. 12'.

I have turned off both AutoCorrect features that would
turn straight to curly. I have hard coded the apostrophes
with ASCII codes (0146 for curly, 039 for straight).

I use Windows 2000 Version 5 (Build 2195: SP3) with Word
97-SR2.

Problem: WYSIWYG is correct, distilling a PDF is correct,
however printing arbitrarily causes incorrect apostrophes
(some straights print as curly, some curlies print as
straight).

Anyone know how to resolve this?

Thanks

I have not encountered this particular problem.

But since it seems to be a problem that appears only when printing you
should check your printer driver. I've encountered many stupid bugs in
printer drivers of the last few years.

Note that some printer drivers have a large number of optional
settings which may not all be in the obvious places.

To get all the options you need to open the printer driver directly,
not though an application.

Some printer drivers have a choice between using downloadable fonts or
native printer fonts (following a substitution table).

Turn off use of native printer fonts. Fonts generally download very
quickly these days and you won't be surprised (so much) by differences
when switching between printers or between what you see on the screen
and what the printer produces.

Some printer drivers have a choice between downloadable fonts and
printing a document graphically. I find that printing a document
graphically generally produces more accurate results.

You can try changing other settings using a short test file that
exhibits the error and see if any of these make a difference.

Check the web for an update for your current printer driver.

You can also try using another driver.

For example, there are generic HP III and HP IV drivers which can be
used to drive an HP printer instead of the printer specific driver.
Same with postscript.

I've sometimes found that generic drivers work far better than the
printer-specific driver for a particular printer.

Jim Allan