When I want an apostrophe I get “‹” When I want a quotation mark I get «
In autocorrect options I have checked the box for Replace ‹‹ and » with angle quotes.
How can I restore the standard English apostrophe and quotation marks?
Check at the bottom of your Writer window to see what language your document is in.
You might have inadvertently switched languages and/or keyboard in your operating system. In Windows 10 the shortcut is Windows+Space keys. You can click the small icon next to the time, on mine it reads “ENG US” (meaning English language on US keyboard, yours might read ENG INT, international keyboard). Clicking on the icon should show at least one language and keyboard but also a link to Language preferences.
I don’t know how to change my response from solved. The solution was provided by Earnest Al.
@kmetzger: retype it as a comment if your privileges are insufficient to move it as a comment. If @EarnestAl’s clue proved to be the solution, he’ll transform his comment into an answer.
Then we can clean up the question by deleting non-relevant posts.
I have the same problem, and my Operating System settings are fine. Every software works correctly, except Writer, and only if the document being edited is in Italian. Changing the document language is not a solution for me. I am a multilingual writer, and I need apostrophes on any language that I wrote in.
Notably, in my case, French works fine, but Italian does have the apostrophe problem.
Any help will be much appreciated!
First, help us to understand your context: OS name, LO version, save format. Which is your OS locale? How’s your LO configured with regard to this locale? Do you set correctly current language in your multilingual documents? Usually this is done with styles (both paragraph and character).
Thank you. I’m a translator and translate from English to German so I have both language keyboards. When the problem occurs the document is in English.
Maybe the document came from Google Docs and doesn’t specify English properly. In the English document, try selecting all the text and setting the language to one of Writer’s English languages, probably English (USA) or English (UK) depending on its origin.
It won’t change existing <<>> so you might have to use Find and Replace for that.
Warning! You answered @EarnestAl’s request for information with an Answer. Consequently, contributors see the question is supposed to have been solved by someone and this may discourage them to provide further ideas/solutions.
In your own interest, make your “non-solution” a comment and delete the “non-answer”. Thanks.
In addition to other data, what is your LO version? How do you save your documents, .odt or .doc(x)?
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Check the Localized Options tab of Tools - AutoCorrect - AutoCorrect Options. Maybe you set the wrong characters for the quotation marks (and apostrophe) for English.
I experimented a bit and found that the settings are independent of the selected language for the text that you type. Changing ’ and " to ‹ and « in those settings will work for whatever language is displayed in the status bar. So, you should set them to the standard English single and double quotation marks instead of the German ones.
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I had the same apostrophe (single quote) and double quote problem. While typing these two characters, they appeared as a space. Except when it is the first character in the cell…
I solved it this way:
- Go to Tools / AutoCorrect Options…
- Select the tab “Localised Options”
- Uncheck “Replace” under Single Quotes
- Uncheck “Replace” under Double Quotes
and then you can again type these two quote characters.
Despite the fact that they are by default replacing by the same character, it does NOT work.
Windows 11 Home / LibreOffice 24.2.5.2 using .odt files.
Cheers