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Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:45 am
by valuedinsights
Welcome beginner. Please answer all of the questions below which may provide information necessary to answer your question.
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Which version of OpenOffice.org are you using?
What Operating System (version) are you using?
What is your question or comment?

I'm using 2.4 version and Windows XP.

How do i remove the "curly quotes" so my writing doesn't end up like what000s....with invalid characters?
My articles are getting rejected because of this and I can't find an answer anywhere that I've looked. I've searched for curly quotes in Openwriter's Help section with no luck.

Any help would be appreciated.

Scott

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:40 am
by acknak
You can disable the automatic conversion of ascii "straight" quotes into typographic “curly” quotes using Tools > AutoCorrect > Single/Double quotes > Replace = NO (unchecked). If those options are off, then typing single or double quotes will give you the plain ascii quote characters.

On the other hand, there should be no problem with using the typographic quotes. Virtually every font will include them.

I'm going to guess that you're saving your document as MS Word .doc files, right?

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 8:27 pm
by foxcole
valuedinsights wrote:How do i remove the "curly quotes" so my writing doesn't end up like what000s
Doesn't end up like what, now?? What does "what000s" mean?
valuedinsights wrote:....with invalid characters? My articles are getting rejected because of this
I'm willing to bet they're rejected because of invalid characters, not because your documents contain curly quotes. As a matter of fact, every publisher i can think of (and can look up) rejects straight quotes outright, so I hope you're just looking for a way to avoid invalid characters, not to replace everything with straight quotes! (Publishers all use correct typography and will have to pay a typographer to correct the straight quotes. If yours are coming through for some reason as invalid characters, they're rejecting instead of paying a typographer to correct those.)

What font are you using and how are you inserting curly quotes? Do you have a screenshot or, better yet, a file sample you can post? I've actually never known curly quotes of any sort to be rejected as "invalid characters," so your issue is a bit surprising.

Are you just having OOo replace the quotes automatically? If so, you might consider inserting the true ASCII characters instead of that font-based version.In Windows, “ (opening curly quotes) is Alt+0147, and ” (closing curly quotes) is Alt+0148. You should also use the true quote form for single quotes, ‘ and ’: Alt+0145 and Alt+0146, respectively. EDIT: This is not necessarily good advice. See my later post in this thread.

You can record macros and assign these to shorter keyboard combos or to custom tools, if desired. You can also choose to always insert one set or the other as ASCII characters and just type straight ones for the other set, then do a Find All/ Replace All to globally replace the other set when you're done with the article. It's a tiny bit faster, anyway.

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 8:45 pm
by valuedinsights
All I did was copy and paste my article from Openwriter to ArticleMarketer.com. This is their reply:

"Article Review Comment: Your copy appears to contain some non-text characters (probably from the word processor) that did not translate to plain text. These characters cause technical problems with RSS feeds, so publishers generally will not accept them.

GraphiAvoid this problem from the start!
You can avoid these problems altogether in a couple of ways:

1. You can write your articles in a text editing program such as Notepad. Special characters will not be added when you write.

2. Prefer to write in Word? No worries, simply change the AutoCorrect options in MS Word so that regular quotes are not automatically replaced with curly quotes. Visit Microsoft Help for specific instructions for your version of Word.

Once you’ve taken care of the curly quotes, go ahead and submit!
cal bullets, MS Word "curly quotes" or non-English language characters may be causing this problem.

End of ArticleMarketer's reply

This is Scott again...they give the instructions on how to fix it in Microsoft Word...not Openwriter. According to Microsoft Word Help...you change it to "smart quote." I couldn't locate any smote quotes.

I will attempt to fix it by the first reply...autocorrect and uncheck the boxes in custom quotes. This must be Openwriter's default because I never changed them.

Thanks for the replies.

Scott

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 8:58 pm
by foxcole
valuedinsights wrote:This is Scott again...they give the instructions on how to fix it in Microsoft Word...not Openwriter. According to Microsoft Word Help...you change it to "smart quote." I couldn't locate any smote quotes.
"Smart quotes" are the "curly quotes" to which those incomplete instructions from that website refer. In Word 2003, that's in Format> AutoFormat> Options (button).
valuedinsights wrote:I will attempt to fix it by the first reply...autocorrect and uncheck the boxes in custom quotes.
All that will do is stop replacing straight quotes with font-based curly quotes. Use the ASCII method I told you about instead.

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 10:22 pm
by valuedinsights
I'm sorry but I still can't correct this. I will post an example from Openwriter...and than a post from ArticleMarketer.

Openwriter:Often times, we get so caught up in the physical aspects of what's on the outside and forget to take care of the inside. Exercising our brain consciously and subconsciously is an important factor when improving one’s life and creating a healthy state of mind as we age.

When a person is depressed, stressed, tired, and frustrated, it effects everything we do as well as the people closest to us. I remember someone telling me in a depressed state, that she couldn’t even watch television because she didn’t want to watch the living. When I get down, I often think of that comment and it reminds me of a place I don’t ever want to be.

When I copy and paste into ArticleMarketer, this is how it reads AFTER I submit it.

Often times, we get so caught up in the physical aspects of what's on the outside and forget to take care of the inside. Exercising our brain consciously and subconsciously is an important factor when improving one�s life and creating a healthy state of mind as we age.

When a person is depressed, stressed, tired, and frustrated, it effects everything we do as well as the people closest to us. I remember someone telling me in a depressed state, that she couldn�t even watch television because she didn�t want to watch the living. When I get down, I often think of that comment and it reminds me of a place I don�t ever want to be.

I am using Times New Roman for my font. Would a different font be better?

Thanks again

Scott

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:26 pm
by foxcole
(It's not Openwriter. It's Writer, or OpenOffice.org Writer. Anyone who tells you otherwise is mistaken.)

Is that ArticleMarketer.com or ArticleMarketer.org? I'd like to have a look at their submission guidelines and if possible, formatting and system requirements.

Meanwhile, you're asking again about fonts so i'm not quite clear on exactly what it is you're showing me. ASCII is font-independent. Are you saying you inserted the ASCII characters as I suggested and that's what is happening to them? Or are you inserting the characters from the fontset and that's what's happening to them?

Times New Roman is one of the "universal" fonts, so unless the font is corrupted (which does happen) that shouldn't be the problem. However, if font is important, the submission requirements will specify that.

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:41 am
by valuedinsights
It's Articlemarketer.com

I can correct it manually which I did. I just don't understand that since it types great with no problem until I "submit" it to ArticleMarketer.com, how is it my problem?

The other article directories including submityourarticle.com, goarticles.com, articledashboard.com and many others have never had an issue with it.

I orginally never changed anything in Openoffice.

I have Zoho Business Processor saved in my favorites. I'll try them the next time and see what happens.

Thanks for all of your help. Much appreciated.

Scott

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 4:59 pm
by foxcole
valuedinsights wrote:I can correct it manually which I did. I just don't understand that since it types great with no problem until I "submit" it to ArticleMarketer.com, how is it my problem?

The other article directories including submityourarticle.com, goarticles.com, articledashboard.com and many others have never had an issue with it.
I would try contacting ArticleMarketer.com and raising the issue with them, including this list of other sites that have no trouble with the font characters. Their system is doing something it should not be doing. EDIT: This is not necessarily true. See my later post in this thread. Meanwhile, at least you know how to make the site accept your articles. :)
Good luck! And best of luck with your writing. I hope it's both fulfilling and fruitful for you.

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:03 pm
by huw
foxcole wrote:It's not Openwriter. It's Writer, or OpenOffice.org Writer. Anyone who tells you otherwise is mistaken.
The name OpenWriter still is used a lot in the Linux world, including magazines. Officially, I think, it was the name used between StarWriter & OpenOffice Writer. It's used so many places that http://sw.openoffice.org/ is still the first Google result.

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:14 pm
by foxcole
huw wrote:The name OpenWriter still is used a lot in the Linux world, including magazines. Officially, I think, it was the name used between StarWriter & OpenOffice Writer. It's used so many places that http://sw.openoffice.org/ is still the first Google result.
Bizarre, but interesting. Thanks for the information. In all my years of technical writing, I've never had occasion nor cause nor excuse to call a program anything other than what it calls itself... so I'd never have called it anything other than OpenOffice.org Writer, or just Writer to name the specific OpenOffice.org module. To do otherwise would have been considered a sin. Clearly there are exceptions for everything!

Re: Removing Curly Quotes

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:45 am
by huw
foxcole wrote:To do otherwise would have been considered a sin.
That's the price of being cool, and being retro or old-skool is always cool. Except when it's not.