An Unusual Use for Quotes
Normally, when you type a straight single quote, it gets converted into a curly ("typographers") quote, right? That conversion is controlled by the Use Typographers Quotes checkbox in the Type pane of the Preferences dialog box. If you turn that checkbox off, the conversion stops happening. Note that you can enable/disable the checkbox even without opening the dialog box by pressing Command-Option-Shift-’ (quote) or Ctrl-Alt-Shift-quote. That’s just a fast shortcut for when you need a straight (non-converted) quote.
But that’s not the end of the story. Most people don’t realize that the Dictionary pane of the Prefs dialog box lets you control what character you want the quote to turn into. There’s a number of options, based on different languages:
But what’s particularly interesting about that field is that you can change it to any two characters you want! For example, you could type in some weird characters. For example, here I’ve typed em dashes in one field and backslashes in the other:
The result, of course, is that the automatic quote conversion creates all kinds of mayhem.
Is that useful? I bet someone here can think of a cool use for this auto-correction feature, especially for typesetting some non-traditional, ee cummings kind of poetry. Of course, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, so perhaps I’m just seeing cool features where there are none.
David, you win the prize for the weirdest tip of 2008!
I know about the various quote options, as I have to switch between English and Norwegian styles all the time — in Norwegian, we traditionally use the “outward-facing” guillemots style (double angle brackets), although plenty of local illiterates are being influenced by the British/American quotation styles. Of course, they don’t know the difference between the proper British/American styles either, which “flip” the usage of the single-double quotes, so we’re seeing a lot of weird typesetting now in this country! So you’d feel right at home here, David!
I could never get the Command-Option-Shift-’ quick key to convert the quotes in InDesign, just Quark. What am I missing?
Figured it out. It works if you use the default keyboard shortcuts.
I can’t think of any practical use for this, except as some sort of prank to play on someone. P=)
Klaus, don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll break the record later in 2008.
Tanya, you can use the Keyboard Shortcuts plug-in panel or Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts to change it to whatever you want, in whatever set you’re in. It’s called “Toggle Typographer’s Quotes Preference” and it’s in the Product Area called Text & Tables.
For me, this option makes a lot of sense in four situations.
1. Texts in other languages than English. Single and double quotes are different in French and German, for example.
2. To change the quotes if InDesign preset is wrong. Example: European Portuguese is set wrongly in ID defaults.
3. When the language suffers a reform, which is not usual but sometimes happens. Examples: German and Swiss German were reformed twice since 1995, Portuguese probably will be reformed until 2010. This simple option lets ID remains up to date for these linguistics variations.
4. For technical documents which uses some kind of symbols not found on keyboard. This would be possible in books about Chemistry, Maths, Linguistics or Biology.
I’m always happy and impressed when the comments end up containing as much interesting information as the actual blog posts!
THANK YOU for the keyboard shortcut hint! I do lots of work for the sewing industry, and using the glyphs panel to get straight quotes for inches has been time consuming. This technique will work beautifully.
cool!
(i don’t use it but… whatever)
hehe
Cindy’s comment reminded me that in Quark if you have “smart” quotes turned on, you can type ctrl-alt-’ to get a straight ” and ctrl-’ to get a straight ‘. (I think these are actually “dumb” quotes instead of actual prime marks.) Is there a similar feature in ID?
I used this tip at my job and got fired.
Rob: In CS3 on the Mac (can someone test this in CS2?), you can press Ctrl-quote (or Ctrl-Shift-quote) for a straight quote. You’re right, that might be much easier for Cindy.
I don’t think there is an equivalent on Windows. Anyone?
Christopher: I’m sorry to hear about that. Perhaps you can take some solace in the fact that this “tip” doesn’t seem to stick around. That is, at least on my computer, when I:
1. Set up quotes to something weird.
2. Switch to a different document
3. Make sure quotes are not set to something weird (they’re not… which is good, as I wouldn’t want that setting to be application wide)
4. Switch back to the original document
When I check the Prefs again, my weird characters appear to be gone. Frustrating! Or, what a relief! I can’t decide.
Unfortunately, Ctrl-quote for a straight quote does not work in CS2.
I’m having the exact opposite problem. When I imported from Word into InDesign CS4 it changed all my curly quotes to straight ones and I cannot get them to change. It’s weird because I’m using Georgia font which typically HAS curly quotes. I’ve tried retyping them–no deal, they come out straight. Search/replace does nothing. I’ve checked the dictionary setting and still nothing. I’ve set the preferences and still, they’re straight. I’ve even deleted one article and reimported it to be sure I had the import settings right. Nope. Cut/paste from Word and nope, it still changes them. I hate to go through an 84 page letter size document line by line to replace the quotes individually with a cut/paste.
Anyone have an idea?