no smart quotes (curly quotes) and apostrophes in gmail

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Level 1

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no smart quotes (curly quotes) and apostrophes in gmail

Since updating my iMac to 10.15.5 (19F101), I can no longer get smart quotes (aka curly quotes) or apostrophes when typing Gmail messages on my Mac. It doesn’t seem to matter whether I turn on the “use smart quotes and dashes” choice in System Preferences (keyboard > text) or turn it off. I can almost locate to the date of the software upgrade when all my quotes became inch marks and all my apostrophes became foot marks. Ugh.

This only seems to affect Gmail (although I haven’t tested Google Docs). My Yahoo still behaves, but I cannot use it for this particular account.

Can’t seem to find a way to fix this. I’ve done numerous online searches to no avail. I’ve tried working in Chrome rather than Safari. Didn’t matter.

Any suggestions?

iMac 21.5″ 4K, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 11, 2020 10:52 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

VikingOSX

Community+ 2024

Level 10

116,579 points

Jun 12, 2020 4:41 AM in response to ljulrich

In Safari, there is Edit menu : Substitutions : √ Smart Quotes which "hand-shakes" with the System Preferences : Keyboard setting. If in a local GMail application, is it the most recent version, or does it need updated for Catalina?

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,270 points

Jun 13, 2020 2:25 PM in response to ljulrich

Have you tried inputting them directly? More painful but possible

option and option shift [ curly double quotes “ ”

option and option shift ] curly single quotes ‘ ’

You could make a text substitution for them if they work

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Answer 3

ljulrich Author

Level 1

9 points

Jun 12, 2020 5:32 PM in response to VikingOSX

Tried the Safari thing (edit : substitutions : smart quotes), but it shows smart quotes as checked. Can’t find a way to update Gmail for Catalina — or even to ask Google how to do that. Logged out of all my Google accounts and logged back in. That didn’t fix it either.

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Answer 4

Jun 12, 2020 6:35 PM in response to ljulrich

Looks like it is going to be straight quotes with Safari. The GMail web mail panel may have changed on the Google side too. Is there any configuration setting in GMail web mail to detect/use smart quotes?

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Answer 5

ljulrich Author

Level 1

9 points

Jun 13, 2020 1:51 PM in response to VikingOSX

Well, I give up. (Sort of.) (For now.) Erg.

No matter what I do, I get straight foot marks and inch marks instead of smart (aka curly or typographer) quotes and apostrophes when I use Safari or Firefox. For a minute, it looked like the text was going to behave in Chrome, but it’s wonky there as well. It gives me correct curly left-facing quotes at the beginning (yay!), but then the second set — the end quotes — turn the wrong way — whether they are double or single. And the apostrophe is a straight foot mark.

Tried Google Help (regular and community), but it was no help at all. Surely this is happening to other people and driving them crazy, too.

Many thanks for your assistance, though. I’ll keep checking back here in case you or some other savvy person figures out what’s going on.

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Answer 6

ljulrich Author

Level 1

9 points

Jun 13, 2020 5:51 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thank you, Tom. You are a genius — as well as a gentleman and a scholar. If only Google were as responsive and helpful.

I’m willing to do option [ ] and option shift [ ] until Google makes a fix. Make that, IF Google makes a fix. (What I really want to know is why is no one else pulling their hair out over this???)

And I’ll work on the text substitution thing … not something I’ve done before. But, even being right-brained and old as dirt, I will figure it out.

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