Defining curly quotes

[Andrés Magnússon]

Having Word replace straight quotes with curly ones is a nifty feature,
but there are different types of quotes according to local
trypographical tradition or user discretion. You have your standard
“English†quotes, but there are also „German“ ones, the French have
their «guillemots» while the Germans sometimes use them in »reverse«.
And so on. Word does reflect this according to the selected language,
but the eccentric user must type his own quotes, which often involve
rather convoluted key-combinations.

However the boffins in MBU don't always get it right. In Iceland we use
„German“ typographical traditions, but the Icelandic language option in
Word doesn't reflect this and substitues “English†curly quotes for the
straight ones.

So I ask: Is there any way to tinker with the quote type definition in
languages?

 

[Klaus Linke]

So I ask: Is there any way to tinker with the quote type definition

in languages?

Hi Andrés,

Probably, the quotes for different languages are hard-coded into the program (... in WinWord, it'd be probably in wwintl.dll).

You best report it to Microsoft and try to get it fixed.

As you probably know, you can replace the curly quote marks for the opening and closing quote when you are done typing.

If you want to fix the quotes with a macro, it may be best to replace all curly quotes with straight quotes first, then replace " with " (and 'AutoFormat as you type > Typographical quotes' switched on) to put in (English type) smart quotes, finally do the two replacements mentioned above.
That way, you don't get a mess if there are different types of quotes already.
Unfortunately, Find/Replace doesn't put in correct quotes according to the language (at least in the versions I tried).

AutoFormat -- with everything but smart quotes turned off -- would be another option that works well, but only for text in the main document StoryRange, not in headers, footnotes, comments, text boxes, ...
You could set the language to "German" temporarily, run AutoFormat, and then change the language back to Icelandic.

Regards,
Klaus