Why does Word automatically replace “ and †with « and » ?

[Kalense]

I'm using a QWERTY keyboard, English language selected for text, English
everything. My auto text options are all in English. Yet when I try to
"Replace all" occurrences of a particular character (say £) to get quotes (“
and â€), it gives me « or ». Why? Where can I change this annoying, perverse
and unwanted behaviour? (I live in Belgium, but that doesn't make me French,
Dutch or German.)

 

[Lene Fredborg]

When you "Replace all", do you mean that you manually type the quote
characters (i.e. that you are not using the Find and Replace dialog box)?

If this is correct, I think the problem is that the _language setting_ of
your text is French (even though your text is in English).

If you have the option “"Straight quotes" with “smart quotesâ€" checked on
the "Autoformat As You Type" tab (the option is also found on the
"AutoFormat" tab) in Tools > Options > AutoCorrect Options, the type of
quotes Word applies is determined by the language setting of the actual text.
The quotes « » are applied in case the language is French (in addition to
the quotes, a non-breaking space is also added - can be seen if formatting
marks are turned on).

To make sure that the language of all text in your document is set to
English, select all (Ctrl+A). Then select Tools > Language > Set Language and
select the desired English language in the list. Before closing the dialog
box, also check whether the “Check language automatically†check box is
turned on. If it is, I suggest that you turn it off - if you have all styles
defined with English as the language, this option could be the one that
result in mixed language in your document anyway.

--
Regards
Lene Fredborg
DocTools - Denmark
www.thedoctools.com
Document automation - add-ins, macros and templates for Microsoft Word