CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • March 2, 2018 at 10:49 am #102075
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    I am laying out a book and it is starting to drive me nuts. Why are Smart Quotes so dumb?

    Why does InDesign put smart quotes so many places where they clearly don’t belong. If I type a quote after a number it should be a straight single quote to designate the Inch symbol.

    Why does InDesign put a curly single quote in the middle of a word where there should be a straight apostrophe?

    I have created a find and replace to fix all the Inch and Feet symbols.

    How do others deal with this common problem?

    I have a feeling that a large percentage of people don’t care or notice.

    How can I fix all the contractions and possessive case single quotes to a regular apostrophe?

    I have been using the Find/Change By List Script with some additions, but I needed more so purchased the Multi-Find/Change plug-in.

  • March 2, 2018 at 11:09 am #102076
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I hear your pain, but how should InDesign know whether something should be a straight quote or curly (typographer’s) quote? I think that usually takes a human eye.

    However, there are some tricks in the link below that might help. For example pressing Ctrl-quote makes it straight (at least on the mac)
    https://creativepro.com/curly-typography-quotes-turn-off.php

  • March 2, 2018 at 12:08 pm #102077
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    Thanks David. The Grep find and replace worked good for the numbers. I did the entire book and did find and change one at a time to verify and there wasn’t a single time the grep failed. I don’t understand grep, but found a snippet somewhere that works well. I probably should do the Michael Murphy GREP course on Lynda.

    Find: (?<=\d)”
    Changeto: ~”

    I can’t use the ctrl-quote trick at this point because everything is already typed.

    I probably could fix a significant number of the errors by just looking for curly singles before a lower case t or s and replacing them with an apostrophe.

    Thanks for the link, I will check it out.

    PS, I went to apply your fix on the findchangebylist.txt and (unless I am crazy) the newest ID download has it fixed already.

  • March 2, 2018 at 12:13 pm #102078
    Lindsey Martin

    Member

    A couple of issues here.

    [1] What style are you using? I don’t know of any style guide that recommends a ‘straight apostrophe’ (I assume you mean Unicode x0027) to mark contractions and possesives rather than x2019.

    [2] For numbers, David’s keyboard toggle does not help because I assume you want primes (x2032 and x2033) and InDesign, when typographers’ quotes are turned off, will insert x0027 and x0022. Indeed, not all fonts supply primes: for example, Adobe Text Pro does, but Chaparral Pro does not. I can’t think of an automatic way to fix this as ID would need to distinguish between numbers needing single primes and those needing doubles, but a GREP style in your paragraph styles that inserted a searchable marker after all numerals might get you half way there.

  • March 2, 2018 at 12:28 pm #102079
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    Lindsey,

    I am not using a style guide. I have Stunk and White from about 20 years ago that I use for a lot of things, but have done some things becuase they just look right to me.

    Using Minion Pro and curly single quote just looks wrong to my eye for an apostrophe. Definately wrong as an inch symbol.

    If it is pretty standard to leave the curly single quote instead of apostrophe, then maybe I will just not futz with it.

  • March 2, 2018 at 1:07 pm #102090
    Lindsey Martin

    Member

    Minion Pro does not have primes; at least the version I have installed does not. I confess that I have used the Greek Numeral Sign (x0374), which Minion does have, in place of a single prime from time to time. You may have to fiddle with the placement a bit. You probably don’t want to switch typefaces at this point, but Arno Pro is a nice replacement for Minion and has a much greater complement of glyphs, including primes, and the quotation marks are a little more delicate.

    I would recommend using the single quotation mark in possessives and contractions, especially if the alternative is x0027. I agree, certainly wrong to mark inches.

  • March 2, 2018 at 1:32 pm #102092
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    Lindsey,

    OK, thanks. I probably don’t want to switch to Arno at this point. I have most of the Minion Pro set. More than comes with typekit.

    Whatever I ever knew about “Primes”, I seem to have forgotten.

    So what I did with the x0022 and x0027 for inch and foot is not exactly correct either?

    thanks for the help.

  • March 2, 2018 at 2:57 pm #102095
    Lindsey Martin

    Member

    Well, if the typeface you are using doesn’t have the primes, using x0022 and x0027 is certainly better than using the typographers’ quotation marks. The Unicode standard (at unicode.org) notes that x2032 is for minutes and feet, x2033 for seconds and inches. Sandee Cohen has an article called ‘Creating Proper Primes’ in which she suggests applying italic to x0022 and x0027 to simulate primes in typefaces that don’t provide them. Other useful information about your problem there as well.

  • March 2, 2018 at 3:38 pm #102097
    Kirk Dickinson

    Member

    Thanks. :)

    I don’t do a lot of this type of work. I mostly use ID for flyers and a calendar that I publish every year. There is a learning curve for a book and I haven’t done one is years. I am trying to get back up to speed. :)

  • March 3, 2018 at 6:05 pm #102109
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    So–you’re blaming InDdesign because you think straight quotes in certain circumstances look better in your opinion? How is that InDesign’s fault?

• Author
  Posts