Quotes/smart quotes in S&R

[MerlinMama]

I'm wondering if I'm just not finding this option somewhere...

Is there a way in Search and Replace, to either be able to type in smart quotes (whether single or double) automatically, or disregard the type of quotes? I was searching for some things and it returned "no results", and it wasn't until 4 books later that I realized my error of searching for *you're* with a straight single quote (how it types in) when the entire text has a right single quote. I sometimes have a whole list of errors (or possible errors by authors) to check through, and it gets long and tedious to do the whole ALT+xxx every time.

I'd actually love to be able to type anywhere and have it be smart quotes (as in Word when typing up my personal books), but at least elsewhere in Editor I can smarten punctuation. I wouldn't want to UNsmarten the text, if it were possible...

[eschwartz]

You can use a character set to select either one.

The Insert Character tool will allow you to enter arbitrary unicode characters into the search field, rather than relying on a smartening tool to fix dumb quotes.

[MerlinMama]

Ok, so no way to either type in smart quotes directly, or no way to have S&R disregard type of quotes?

Neither of your suggestions are quite what I was looking for, but thanks anyway, it might help someone else out. Don't need a character set, since all my text is one or the other, not both. Unless I've misunderstood what you mean by character set. I'm assuming it is: ("|“). Is that what you meant?

Insert character tool is (for me) longer than typing in the alt code.

[davidfor]

The simplest thing I have found is to use a dot to match anything. For your example, I would probably search for:

you.re

Otherwise, I just use the Insert Character tool. If I'm fixing problems with quotes, I have it opened to use and parked in the corner of the screen. Then there is the pile of saved searches that cover a reasonable percentage of these problems.

[theducks]

what about REGEX

[[:punct:]]

[MerlinMama]

Although I appreciate the suggestions, and they might help someone else who might search for this, I know how to compensate for the quotes even if it's annoying and I sometimes forget.

I was simply HOPING that I had missed an option or a tweak to either directly type the smart quotes or a way to tell S&R to disregard the TYPE of quotes and find all of them (kind of like the new search while disregarding tags...except able to replace with the correct word).

@davidfor: just to let you know, your suggestion of you.re would not necessarily work, since it would find words without the apostrophe, (words like "you really" etc.) although it would be closest.

Thanks anyway

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by MerlinMama

Ok, so no way to either type in smart quotes directly, or no way to have S&R disregard type of quotes?

Neither of your suggestions are quite what I was looking for, but thanks anyway, it might help someone else out. Don't need a character set, since all my text is one or the other, not both. Unless I've misunderstood what you mean by character set. I'm assuming it is: ("|“). Is that what you meant?

Insert character tool is (for me) longer than typing in the alt code.

Character sets are not capture groups:

["“]

And if you have memorized the alt code, sure.

...

But yeah, there is no way to automagically make a regex find smart quotes whenever you search for a dumb quote. You will have to manually specify it somehow -- although at least you have a couple ways to specify that you don't care which type of quotes are used.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MerlinMama

@davidfor: just to let you know, your suggestion of you.re would not necessarily work, since it would find words without the apostrophe, (words like "you really" etc.) although it would be closest.

True, and usually do a count to see how many matches there are. If there aren't many, I'll go through them carefully. If there are a lot, I'll add something to the search. Usually, it will be a space, but "\b" for the word boundary would work well for your example.