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Keeping Typographer’s Quotes enabled in Type preferences will give you the best results most of the time. But in some situations, you’ll have to intervene to replace an opening single quote mark with an apostrophe. Words and phrases like ’tis, ’twas, rock ‘n’ roll, this ‘n’ that, etc. all need an apostrophe before a letter, but InDesign inserts a single quote. The same goes for abbreviations of years, like class of ’16.
The simple fix is to select the offending single quote and press Option+Shift+] on Mac or Alt+Shift+] on Windows.
Got a bunch of them to fix? Try a GREP Find/Change. For example, to find and fix year abbreviations, search for a Single Left Quotation Mark.
~[
that precedes any digit. For this part, use Positive Lookahead. Choose Match > Positive Lookahead.
Then put your cursor after the equals sign and enter the code for any digit, \d
So the whole Find what expression is ~[(?=\d)
Replace with
~] (Single Right Quotation Mark)
While you’re at it, you might want to throw in some negative tracking to bring the number closer to the apostrophe.
Before
After
This article was last modified on July 25, 2019
This article was first published on April 12, 2016
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