slps01

Q: How to Turn off Smart Quotes

I am unable to turn off “smart quotes” (for the purpose of entering computer code). I have unchecked the box in System Preferences > Language > Keyboard, and in Safari and Mail under the Edit Menu > Substitutions (also in Word and TextEdit), but the smart or ”curly quotes“ continue to appear in each application. Is there any way to fix this in Mavericks? I am running OS X 10.9.3

Posted on Jul 5, 2014 5:19 PM

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Q: How to Turn off Smart Quotes

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  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Jul 6, 2014 4:51 PM in response to slps01
    Level 9 (79,055 points)
    Jul 6, 2014 4:51 PM in response to slps01

    slps01 wrote:

     

    a TexEdit document written in Helvetica font with all of the smart quote settings unchecked. As you can see, the smart quotes still appear.

     

    Is it really Hevetica?  Your prefs say that Plain Text is supposed to be in Century 10.

     

    Those quotes are not correct smart quotes, they are at the wrong ends of the phrase.

     

    What happens if you turn off "correct spelling automatically" and "text replacement".

  • by slps01,

    slps01 slps01 Jul 6, 2014 5:08 PM in response to Tom Gewecke
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 6, 2014 5:08 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

    Tom,

    I do appreciate all your efforts on this, but I don't think we are going to solve this issue. I am attaching another screen shot, which shows the font and the results of turning off spell correct and text replacement.Screen Shot 2014-07-06 at 8.06.06 PM.png

  • by Tom Gewecke,Solvedanswer

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Jul 7, 2014 4:20 AM in response to slps01
    Level 9 (79,055 points)
    Jul 7, 2014 4:20 AM in response to slps01

    slps01 wrote:

     

    I am attaching another screen shot, which shows the font and the results of turning off spell correct and text replacement.

     

    Yes, those are correct smart quotes now.   I certainly can't duplicate the issue.

     

    I suggest you set up a new user account and see if you still have the problem when you are logged into that.  If not, then it is something broken in your main user account.

  • by slps01,

    slps01 slps01 Jul 7, 2014 9:00 AM in response to Tom Gewecke
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 7, 2014 9:00 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

    You were correct. It was something in my main user account. The problem disappeared when I set up a new user account, and it disappeared in the main user account when I trashed all of my startup items. Not sure which one was causing the problem.

    Thanks again for all your help.

  • by drowningindata,

    drowningindata drowningindata Mar 24, 2015 6:20 PM in response to slps01
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 24, 2015 6:20 PM in response to slps01

    My situation is a bit different to the main thrust of this thread in that I need to use smart quotes and can't get them to work in Pages 5.5.2.

    I'm on a 2009 iMac, using Yosemite 10.10.1, Pages 5.5.2

     

    I've followed the instructions on Apple's page (http://help.apple.com/pages/mac/5.0/#/tanad45f9cce) to make all quotes smart quotes in my document and it didn't work.

    When I opened Substitutions in Pages the box for smart quotes was ticked, unticking and reticking and doing 'replace all' made no difference.

    Prior to this I'd just changed the font style setting for the document from Courier New to Times New Roman.


    I've also checked in System Prefs/Keyboard/Text where Use smart quotes is ticked.

    I'm formatting a book, this is holding up production of my book as all quotes are non-curly, straight quotes and need to be changed to smart quotes.

     

    I'm wondering whether I shouldn't go back to the previous version of Pages where everything seemed to work, including auto capitalisation.

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Mar 25, 2015 5:56 AM in response to drowningindata
    Level 9 (79,055 points)
    Mar 25, 2015 5:56 AM in response to drowningindata

    drowningindata wrote:

     

    My situation is a bit different t

     

     

     

    Yes, and to get the best help with that you should repost your questiion in the forum for Pages:

     

    Pages for Mac

  • by TheTiminator,

    TheTiminator TheTiminator Aug 28, 2016 3:50 PM in response to slps01
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Aug 28, 2016 3:50 PM in response to slps01

    I see this discussion thread is a couple of years old, but this may help those who are asking this same question using OS X El Capitan (10.11.x). In both Apple Pages and TextEdit, you can turn “smart quotes”on or off  by going to the Edit menu and selecting Substitutions>Smart Quotes. As you can see in this example from TextEdit, this works quite simply and does not change your global settings, as in some of the suggested solutions above.

     

    TextEdit example.jpg

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Aug 28, 2016 5:12 PM in response to TheTiminator
    Level 9 (79,055 points)
    Aug 28, 2016 5:12 PM in response to TheTiminator

    The question posed by this thread is actually how to turn smart quotes off when the fix you suggest does not work.

     

    A better term for your second line is straight quotation mark.  Prime marks are slanted like this:  ″

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