We often have numbers in our documents followed by a foot or inch symbol. With typographer’s quotes being on, those symbols become curly quotes. I’ve been working on a GREP expression to search and replace the single and double curly quotes and to straight quotes when followed behind numbers, except ignore the single apostrophe when it’s followed by an “s.” Using Find/Change I was able to find the single apostrophe and replace it… however, once I added the part to the expression to ignore the ‘s, it finds the apostrophe, plus the space or hyphen next to it. Here’s my example:
200′ of string (need to change curly to straight in my document)
5’-6″ wall of art (need to change curly to straight in my document)
2000’s (need to ignore this type of instance)
GREP I’m using: ‘[^’s] … it ignores the ‘s but then picks up ‘and the space next to it, and ‘- (plus the hyphen)—in both cases, the apostrophe does change to straight, but it removes the space and hyphen.
I’m teaching myself GREP and doing pretty good with some expression, but this one has me a bit stuck. I’m not sure if I should be using one of the Lookarounds or not… any help is appreciated.
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