Smarten straight quotes in Pages 1.0

Mar 09, '05 10:10:00AM

Contributed by: nerkles

If you've imported or pasted text into Pages, and want to smarten up your quotes (convert straight quotes to curly quotes), just hit Command-F to bring up the Find and Replace dialog. Put a double-quote in both the Find and Replace fields, hit Replace All, and it's done! Repeat the same process with straight single quotes in the Find and Replace dialog, and it will smarten them, too.

The only case I've noticed where it gets it wrong is when you have a quote (either single or double) immediately following a dash (endash or emdash), or after a hyphen. But those cases tend to be rare. Note: be sure "Use smart quotes" is checked in Preferences or this won't work.

[robg adds: I often have to go the other way, converting curly quotes into straight quotes. If you disable the smart quotes option in Preferences, you can then just reverse these directions -- copy and paste a smart single- or double-quote into the Find box, and then just type a single- or double-quote in the Replace box. You only have to copy one of the double-quotes; even though they look different, all will be replaced when you choose Replace All.]

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