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• • June 3, 2023 at 10:35 am #14392664
    Rich Harvey

    Participant

    An author in the United Kingdom sent me the first book in his western series (yes, those UK authors can write good westerns). He’s super-talented, sells well, and the first book in the series is terrific. Except …

    I had forgotten that in the United Kingdom, everyone tends to put single quotation marks around dialogue. InDesign can handle this with no problem, I’m assuming, but only if I select the correct command.

    How can I change the thousands of ‘quotations’ to “quotations” without altering single-quote requirements like inevitable apostrophe-s?

  • June 3, 2023 at 12:19 pm #14392665
    Steve Davis

    Participant

    What is your role in this job? Are you the designer, proofreader, what is the publisher’s standard? Whose decision is this?

  • June 3, 2023 at 12:46 pm #14392666
    Rich Harvey

    Participant

    I’m the publisher and the designer. Since most copies will probably sell in the US, I figured it’s better to standardize the quote marks.

  • June 3, 2023 at 1:02 pm #14392667
    Steve Davis

    Participant

    Your assertion of the use of single quotes in the UK strikes me as a little odd as no British writer would generally use them (single quotes) in prosaic speech. That being said the easiest way for you to change things is with a simple F/C but if you want to use GREP that will work too.

    • June 3, 2023 at 2:00 pm #14392668
      Rich Harvey

      Participant

      A simple F/C would change all the quote marks. Including the quotes in the character’s name O’Connor. So a simple find and Change wouldn’t work. Also, there are apostrophe S to consider — O’Connor’s horse, for instance.

    • June 4, 2023 at 1:44 am #14392671
      Steve Davis

      Participant

      So a cheap and cheerful way would be to do a F/C on space + quote and on quote + space and then deal with (or not) your (this time) correctly placed possessive apostrophes.

  • June 3, 2023 at 2:53 pm #14392669
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Yeah, I see what you mean… I don’t know if there is a script that would let you swap these intelligently. One idea that comes to mind: do a grep search for (?<=[^])’(?=[^]) (which means "find all apostrophes that have letters on both sides") and then replace that with any kind of special character that you don't use anywhere else. Then do a regular find/change to replace all single quotes with double quotes. Finally search for that special character and replace it with a single quote.

    • June 7, 2023 at 7:57 am #14392724
      Rich Harvey

      Participant

      Well, more time was spent worrying worrying about this than actually fixing it. Following David’s advice …

      Just one minute ago, I copied and pasted that code under the “GREP” window. Using F/C, I replaced all single quotes with characters on each side (such as apostrophe S) with the copyright symbol ( © ). I chose the copyright symbol since I wanted something that didn’t appear ANYWHERE within the context of the novel. (The front matter and back matter are saved as separate InDesign files, then assembled using the “BOOK” feature.)

      I replaced all remaining single quotes with double quotes, then re-replaced the copyright symbol © with single quotes. So, far so good. This was a huge time-saver … especially since the lead character’s name is O’Brien. (phew!)

      Now, of course, I’ll proofread the novel from beginning to end, but I don’t anticipate many problems from here onward …

      Thanks for your help!

  • June 4, 2023 at 2:02 am #14392672
    Steve Davis

    Participant

    The thing that drives me crazy is the style of English produced from foreign works translated to English, take (for example) Saramago translated: No quotations and/or line breaks and/or device denoting when speech begins and/or ends!

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