Curly Quotes to Inches and Feet

That is bad programming, they should not occur in these situations.

Thank you for pointing it out I never noticed, because like 95% of the known universe I use metric measures.

I have tried all the likely keyboard commands and searched the user manual and can not find a solution.

I thought of replacing the auto correction with the appropriate space" and "space but this is already hard encoded in and wouldn't fix the problem. What was required in the programming was to check if there was a leading quote mark before substituting a trailing quote mark.

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A work around is to go:

+Menu > Edit > Special Characters… > Punctuation > and use ′ or ″ (single or double Prime)+

These are actually the correct characters for feet and inches and will not be substituted.

To speed it up as you type you could use auto-correction to substitute for /' and /" or whatever you think will work.

What was required in the programming was to check if there was a leading quote mark before substituting a trailing quote mark.

That wouldn't help if your inches were inside a quotation. Or for feet in general. I think the only good way to do this like TextEdit does.

As was already stated, you could program something like option-s for single straight quote and option-d for double. I doubt many people use those characters. Use the special characters window to select the straight quotes when creating the substitution rule. Seems to work but with one drawback, you have to put a space in front of it to have it autocorrect then go back and remove the space.

Message was edited by: Badunit

Actually, two drawbacks to autocorrect. It messes up the smart quotes. If your straight quote is inside a curly quote, the closing curly quote will face the wrong way. The only way I see around that is to not put the straight quotes on until after you're done with any smart quoting.

Exactly as they are typed. ' and " are not the characters for feet and inches.

′ and ″ are the correct characters, as I stated before.

btw this is option s: ß otherwise known as doppel es, a german character for ss.

and option d is ∂.

So I would not advise using those. Which is why I suggested using auto-correction with a few GREP like markers.

Any other keys could be used, not just option-s and option-d. I chose those mostly to signify "single" and "double". For those who use those particular characters, other choices would be more appropriate. And you are correct, straight quotes (and accents) are not the correct characters.

Seems the best bet is to leave the special characters window open whenever you need to select these characters.

P.S. Before anyone dings me on how many quotes to use for feet vs. inches, excuse me, it is late.

Seems the best bet is to leave the special characters window open whenever you need to select these characters.

It seems odd that neither the US nor US Extended keyboard layouts provide the prime and double-prime characters, so you have to use either the Character Palette or make a custom layout for them.

Tom,

The thing that really hit my eye when I was trying to resolve this, is that if you look at the keyboard they are actually marked as single and double primes not the straight quotes they actually represent!

Peter

The thing that really hit my eye when I was trying to resolve this, is that if you look at the keyboard they are actually marked as single and double primes not the straight quotes they actually represent!

On my keys all the characters are slanted to the right rather than straight up and down.

That's what I am saying Tom.

I guess I would see them as oblique versions of ' and ", rather than "marked as single and double primes". But it does seem like the primes ought to be somewhere on the keyboard for us folks still using archaic measurements:-)

Tom Gewecke wrote:
But it does seem like the primes ought to be somewhere on the keyboard for us folks still using archaic measurements:-)

Or at least be able to type in the correct code for the character, like you can on PC's by holding ALT and typing a few numbers.

Or at least be able to type in the correct code for the character, like you can on PC's by holding ALT and typing a few numbers.

Yes, to do that on a Mac you have to switch to the Unicode Hex layout, which is not very convenient.

Tom,

Actually better programs do check for the sequence. 1 off, 2 on, 3 off etc.

Best is if there is an input method, with dead keys like for accents.

Peter

All of that ignores that the ' and " are actually the wrong characters for feet and inches in the first place.

Option-e makes an accent that looks a lot like a straight quote. Use one for inches and two for feet.

Message was edited by: Badunit