How to turn off smart quotes and dashes in Word 2007
Jul 29th, 2008 by handolio
Click here to go straight to step-by-step instructions.
Anyone who’s used Word will know that, by default, it replaces bog-standard straight quotes (and here I’d demonstrate what they look like, but our theme will change them to curved ones) with curved ones. It also changes hyphens (-) to en dashes (–).
No big deal, you’d think. After all, it’s 2008. Surely nobody’s producing websites that can only handle the 93 printable characters provided by ASCII, a seven-bit telegraphic code developed in the 1960s?
Yeah, you’d think. Just yesterday we encountered a problem with, as our client described it to us, “some unknown entity (probably some rogue character)… breaking [the] import process”. We all ran to the transporter room with phasers set to stun, but they turned out to be talking about a curved apostrophe that had crept unbidden into a few hundred words of copy.
Don’t quote me
After more problems today, we found ourselves double-checking our PCs looking for the one on which we’d forgotten to disable the feature. Charlie asked if I could put together “a quick step-by-step list of how to turn off styled quote marks and lengthened dashes”. I could, and here it is:
1 Click the stupid, round, nameless button in the top left of Word.
2 Click Word Options, hidden irritatingly in the last place you’d expect to find it; at the bottom of the drop down menu that appears.
3 Click Proofing in the left-hand pane of the pointlessly over-styled and graphics-heavy window that appears.
4 Click the grey, blockily incongruous AutoCorrect Options… button.
5 Click the AutoFormat as you type tab.
6 Under Replace as you type, uncheck every. Single. Fucking. Option.
7 Click the AutoFormat tab.
8 Under Replace, uncheck every. Single. Fucking. Option. Again. Because clearly once wasn’t enough.
9 Click OK on both windows to get back to the unadulterated joy of using Word 2007.
Of course, this is elementary punctuation pedantry. If you want something a little harder, I heartily recommend Mr Phin’s Ten typographic mistakes everyone makes. At the time of writing, it’s attracted an extraordinary 150 comments.
While we’re being pedantic, I think it should be “Ten typographic mistakes that everyone makes”, but I’ll let a sub tell him. What’s the worst that could happen?
I think most subs would tell you that “that” is quite often a waste of space, particularly in a headline.
A wise man once told me that.
Get any closer to Janey and repeat that – she’ll rip your head clear off.
Funnily I don’t remember a single argument about omitting the word “that” at Dennis, but then I do find myself inserting it on proofs all the time. Unless you’re pushed for space, as in a headline, I don’t see any reason to remove it – it doesn’t help sentences to read more clearly.
Also, you may find this handy:
http://www.semiologic.com/software/wp-tweaks/unfancy-quote/
It strips out all curly quote marks automatically from WordPress, preventing that particularly irritating error where WP puts a pesky stupid curly open quote mark (yes, this is a technical term) at the end of a block quote.
Nope, I don’t remember an argument, either – it’s just one of those things that used to get added to my copy, and after a while I began to see why.
Charlie & I didn’t used to see eye-to-eye on ‘that’, but I’ve noticed that he’s started to use it more, too. I’ve realised now that I’m intentionally dropping it from some of the less formal copy I write, as it seems to help with the tone. I guess you’ve got to know the rules before you can bend them.
Cheers for the link – too tired to investigate tonight. Been meaning to upgrade to 2.6 anyway, but I’m not sure after reading about your problems.
Ah, yeah – 2.6 completely borked my site for half an hour or so. I went back a day later and tried again, and I did eventually get the upgrade working – I think the problem was with V2.5 introducing a new requirement in wp-config.php. Version 2.5 kept working despite me failing to add this (clever software), v2.6 fell on its arse (baaad software).
So – it can be done, but back up the database first just in case
It’s weird; I tend to omit the ‘that’ from a sentence when I write it, probably because I try to keep my copy light and conversational*, but I do tend to insert them when I’m proofing stuff. For my money it’s a question of register, and in this context I probably should have thatted it up.
Merci bien for the link action, too; I need to do a follow-up post to that at some point. Did you know that I actually had people suggest I should kill myself because what I was saying was so pointless?
Thank you so much! I was about to downgrade word because clients were complaining. Thank you again.
Thank you for you excellent advice. That. Finally. Fucking. Did. It.