Slanted Doodles

Posted Wed, 12/19/12

While I use Microsoft Word for the majority of my text documents, the program does have an annoying feature that I'm forever correcting.

Notice the difference in apostrophes and quotation marks:

“I don’t like it.”

"I don't like it."

Microsoft Word automatically slants apostrophes and other symbols at angles, most notably quotation marks which I obviously use extensively in fictional character conversations. If the corrections involve just a few pages, I don't mind manually fixing them. However, when the "slanters" display on hundreds of pages I quickly lose patience.

I found the solution to the problem in the rarely-used Microsoft Works. If I can maintain a semblance of patience through the writing process for an entire book (including edits), I can then copy/paste the entire manuscript from MS Word into MS Works, where slanted apostrophes and quotation marks correct themselves. Thereafter, I copy/paste everything back into MS Word for submission and/or publishing purposes.

It beats doing the corrections manually for each occurrence. I could leave the marks as is, but I simply don't like the "slanter" look.

Irish Eyes: Writing

Tags: Writing