Why Did My Curly Typography Quotes Turn Off?
Ben wrote:
Do you know why in InDesign, the “Use Typographer’s Quotes” preference just toggles off every now and again?
Yeah, this can be an annoying one. For those who don’t know, this is a preference that lives inside the Type pane of the Preferences dialog box. When it is on, you get proper typographer’s quotes whenever you press the single or double quote key on the keyboard.
In the US, that means “curly” quotes, but it might mean guillamet or other quote types in other languages. (You can control that in the Dictionary pane of the Preferences dialog box.)
However, sometimes you’ll find yourself typing along and you’ll type a quote and it won’t be a proper typographer’s quote! What happened?
The answer is almost always: You turned off the preference accidentally. You’d think that would be hard to do, since it’s inside a dialog box. But actually, you can toggle this preference on or off with a keyboard shortcut: Hold down Command-Option-Shift- or Ctrl-Alt-Shift- and press ‘ (that’s a single quote). So you were flailing around on the keyboard, you might press that accidentally.
Another possibility may be that you held down the Ctrl key on the Mac while pressing the quote keys. That temporarily disables the “make it curly” feature.
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Another possibility is that the person doesn’t know about the “set preferences with no documents open“ thing. In the beginning (must have been version 1.5), I would get annoyed that my measurement units always got reset. It took me ages to figure out that they were a per-document setting living in the application preferences that would get reset every time I made a new document and that I had to set it with no document open for it to stick (unless I opened a document that still had other measurement units set).
Similar thing about the rulers in Illustrator. Good luck trying to switch those on permanently…
Good point, Peter! Thanks.
Thanks for the second location (Dictionary) for the smart quotes – I knew about Type but didn’t remember Dictionary. They’re back!
What about the opposite problem? I use straight quotes for feet and inches in my documents (as everyone should) but whenever I cut and paste the straight quotes they turn curly. Why does this happen and is there any way I can prevent it from happening?
Brett: You need that shortcut I mentioned! Hit the shortcut to turn off the preference, then paste, then press the shortcut again to turn the preference on again. That way your quotes won’t get converted when you paste.
It’s still kind of a wonky system but it makes more sense now.
Thanks, and thanks for all your help from the days of Quark 3.32 to now.
So THAT’s what’s causing it! By the end of the day I’m usually flustered and “flailing around on the keyboard” (love that!) and all kinds of unsuspected things happen.
I’m big on keyboard shortcuts, but wasn’t aware of the ones available for the preferences. Is there a list somewhere? I often turn on/off the Composition highlighting to see what type has been squeezed or expanded. I’d love to know the shortcut for that one.
Very helpful stuff, thanks a lot. One more reason to love indesignsecrets.com
David,
How did you know that happened to me two days ago?
Sandee
So I thought I’d gather a bunch of tips and tricks for my PePcon session with David, and I discovered that Cmd-Opt-Shift-‘ no longer works to toggle keyboard shortcuts on or off.
In fact, Cmd-Opt-Shift-‘ doesn’t work with any menu command assigned. At least not in 10.8.5 +.
It took a little poking around but I discovered the problem.
Go to System Preferences, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, Keyboard & Text. Look for the entry for Move Focus to the Window Drawer. The shortcut is listed as Cmd-Opt-‘. But even though that’s not the same as the Cmd-Opt-Shift-‘, it is causing InDesign to no longer use the shortcut.
Turn off the switch for Move Focus to the Window Drawer, and InDesign’s keyboard shortcut will work correctly!
Thank you, Sandee!!!
Thanks so much, Sandee! It was driving me crazy not to have nice quotation marks.
Here’s a stumper:
I was working on a document and all of a sudden the typographer quotes stopped working. I was going along and went to switch an incorrectly placed single quote to a double–and saw it was coming out straight! The correct selection is made in Preferences, Type and also in Dictionary. I even switched the preferences to other symbols and was still getting straight quotes and not the symbols I selected (like the French quotes, for example.) Other existing Indesign docs and new documents are not affected and the curlies work normally. I ended up re-importing the doc to a new file (I import stuff from Word, been doing it for eons without this happening) and the curlies were working just fine again. Until just a bit ago! Fortunately the existing quotes are not affected, and I don’t have to add any more. But danged if I could figure out what the heck happened! I’m using CS5 on Windows 7 and have been using Adobe apps since 1993 on both Mac and PC… never had this issue before. Any ideas? (And I tried trashing preferences, too. Didn’t work.)
Hey Terry, what timing! I’ve been having that exact problem with a doc I’ve been working on for weeks in CS6.
Disabling the preference, applying the change, and re-enabling it didn’t work. However, disabling the preference, _entering some text with apostrophes or quotes with the preference disabled into a new, standalone text frame_, then reactivating the preference worked.
Even then, that only worked in standalone text frames–not the master page’s primary text frames.
It’s totally bizarre, and there’s no way that’s working as designed.
I’ve got a big document full of non-typographers quotes. Checked the preferences and sure enough the “use typographer quotes” option was not checked.
Is there a way to find/replace or use grep to turn all my quotations into typographers quotes?
Joe: Yup! Turn on the typographer’s preference again, then do two find/changes… first, find all ” and replace with ” (yes, find and change exactly the same thing). Then find the ‘ and replace with ‘ (again, same thing). Hit Change All. Woo hoo!
I’m wondering if there is anyplace where to see this preference keyboard shortcut cause this one does not work on my French version. I don’t know if it’s related to the Canadian French keyboard or InDesign itself.
thank for the article
Andre
We have a situation in which typographical quote marks already typed into text copy are converted to straight when the document is opened on certain computers. The text content comprises InCopy assignments. All computers have “Use Typographical quotes” enabled in InDesign and InCopy. Any suggestions on what might be causing this?
I’m having this issue as well. Did you ever find a fix for the problem?
I’ve been very annoyed with this recently as well. My document starts with a template with the preference for curly quotes turned on. I use Cmd/Ctrl/’ to make them straight quotes for feet, add Shift for inches. Works great. This isn’t a combination I use often and it doesn’t turn off the preference.
BUT – it seems if I’m copying from another program or email, something, the preference turns off. I’m thinking it has to do with Yosemite as I just can’t recall this happening prior to the upgrade. Running CS5 at work, CC at home.
I’m having to recheck every document before sending them to print and this is becoming very time consuming. I’m looking forward to hearing new fixes, or at least a reason. Thanks for the input!
Thanks for posting this Denise because I have the exact same problem. Preference is correct but copying and pasting, then it doesn’t work.
I have same problem. If font is retained, then the standards of that font with regards to quotation marks should also be retained when copying and pasting. Does not seem to be the case in MS Word.
I found one more place to check when having smart quote and editing issues. The Language setting for my text style was set to [No Language], which effectively disables all the smarts of InDesign’s text editing. I set it to English: USA (my language) and everything worked as before.
I’m using CC 2015. I’m using a font for a client, Whitney (open). I just noticed the quotes come in straight instead of curly. I did go to Preferences and found that the “use typographer’s quotes” was off, so I clicked it on. But there is no change with this particular font. All commas, apostrophes, and quote marks come in straight and ugly. When I use another font the same text comes in with curly quotes, commas and apostrophes.
Another thing to note, using CC2015, when I select the faulty quote and hover it gives me the option to change it. It shows a tiny window (beside my cursor) with the curly quotes to click on. That works perfectly but way too tedious! What’s going on with this font?
Thanks!
Linda, Whitney (I assume we are talking about typeface from Hoefler & Co.) appears to have a regular set of punctuation in which the quotation marks are straight and slightly slanted as well as an alternate set in which the quotation marks are curved. Check the Glyphs panel in ID. You may be able to activate the altermate set via Character panel > Opentype or Character panel > Opentype > Stylistic Sets. Let us know how it goes as it’s an interesting case.
You guys are amazing! Thank you! I was mistaking those straight slanted punctuation marks as some sort of generic replacement. I thought something was missing. Thank you for pointing out that they are part of the Whitney font. I feel much better now. I’ve not been able to do a document wide change to the marks (through the character panel) so I’m going to let it go. Just relieved it doesn’t look like a mistake!
Have a great day! And please sign me up for your “tip” emails.
Linda
I’m stuck with a similar but a bit more complicated issue.
I’m working on a document containing both Chinese and English characters.
The Chinese characters need to be in Noto Sans CJK font, while the roman-numeric alphabets need to be in Roboto.
So I created composite fonts that automatically selects the appropriate fonts.
The problem is, regardless of whether I switch the Typographer’s Quotes option on or off, I get straight quotation marks (in Roboto).
When I paste curly quotes from another document into this paragraph, I get full-width curly quotation marks in Noto Sans CJK font, which comes with a large chunk of space after the quotation. Very ugly.
To further complicate the issue (I’m sorry), the language of the paragraph style is set to Chinese (because they need to be converted to html later and another tool needs to read the language code). The weird thing is, When I changed the language to English (US), I got curly quotes, but again in Noto Sans CJK…
The only way I managed to type a curly quotation mark into the paragraph is by manually selecting Roboto as the font, turning on the Typographer’s Quote on, AND switching the language to English.
How do I get InDesign to spit out curly quotes in Roboto when I’m using the composite font with language set to Chinese?
I really can’t stand InDesign! It’s much clumsier and less user friendly than the old QuarkXPress 4.1 that I’ve been using for the past 25 years and can’t anymore because my new computer can’t handle the old software.
So, I’m stuck with InDesign. I tried reading this stuff to find out how to get my “smart quotes” to turn on, and I can’t figure it out after reading all your comments. Can you PLEASE explain it, in plain English, explaining where the damn preference dialog box is in InDesign. Again, it was so much easier in Quark.
If you can email me the answer, I’d appreciate it.
InDesign CC [aka ‘application menu’] > Preferences > Type … > Type Options > Use Typographer’s Quotes
If you want to change or eliminate the keyboard shortcut that toggles smart quotes: Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts … > Product Area ‘Text and Tables’ > scroll down to Toggle Typographer’s Quotes Preference.
Both on Mac. I don’t have a recent version on the PC.
Thx, usefull!