Why do curly quotes "reverse"?

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Word does a good job of guessing whether you want opening or closing quotes,
but there are some places where it consistently guesses one way or the
other, and this is often wrong. For example, if you press " after an em
dash, you'll get opening quotes, which are fine if the dash introduces a
quotation but not so good if it ends one. When you AutoFormat a document
that has quotes at the beginning of a line following a line break, you'll
get closing quotes, which doesn't make any kind of sense to me. A single
quote at the beginning of a word will always be an opening quote; if you
want an apostrophe (closing single quote) instead, you can insert it
manually using the Ctrl+', ' keyboard shortcut.

 

[Mary jane]

Thanks Suzanne, however that does not solve the problem. I am not so
concerned with word changing opening quotes to closing or visa versa, the
problem is that curly quotes are the reverse of each other. I have tried to
change auto correct options but the only option working is to change to
straight quotes, if I want curly quotes how can I make them behave and not
"flip" on the opposite side? Usin insert symbol seems a cumbersome solution.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you're saying that you're routinely getting quotes the opposite of what
is required or that quotes are changing direction after they are inserted,
then I have no experience of this and no explanation for it unless possibly
your keyboard language setting is incorrect.

I agree that Insert | Symbol is not a satisfactory solution (I have to do
this in FrontPage, and it is very distracting), and the built-in keyboard
shortcuts are not much better. I'm sorry I don't have a better answer.

 

[Mary jane]

Thanks but this is happening to someone else that asked me how to solve it,
that would mean both our keyboard settings are incorrect, very strange

 

[Tony Jollans]

I'm a bit confused by this question. Curly quotes are meant to be different
at each end - flipped, or the reverse of each other, or however you want to
express it. Are you really asking how to get, effectively, opening curly
quotes in place of closing curly quotes?

 

[Stefan Blom]

I'm a bit confused by this question. Curly quotes are meant to be
different
at each end - flipped, or the reverse of each other, or however you
want to
express it.

Actually, the correct appearance of typographical quotation marks
depends on the language specified for text.