Quote marks - changing curly to straight or vice versa

[PatsyCollins]

I’ve just switched from OpenOffice to LibreOffice. Most things are fine, but I’m having trouble with quote marks. In some of my old documents the quotes are straight. In the new documents they’re curly, and they’re curly when I update an old document. I want to be able to have them the same when I update documents, or combine several. In the past I could change them by using find and replace and replacing all, but that’s not now having any effect.

I’d prefer them all to be straight, but the most important thing is that they match. Can you please tell me how to change them?

I’m using a Mac with Big Sur, Times New Roman version 7.2.5.2.

[Hrbrgr]

Please have a look:

After downloading 5.2.4.2 all my quotation marks and apostrophes went from curved characters to straight. How do I fix this?

Try this. Go Tools (Menu) > AutoCorrect > AutoCorrect Options. . . Localised Options (tab). Look at the details for Single Quotes and Double Quotes. If they don’t show the punctuation characters you want (i.e. curly quotes) then click on the appropriate button and choose the punctuation character you would prefer from the table that opens up. (When the table opens it will suggest the punctuation mark that it thinks you would want.) Once you have selected the curly quote mark then click the Inser…

[PatsyCollins]

Thanks everyone for your comments. I can now see how to change the style of quotes when I write – but still can’t work out how to change them on older documents.

Is there a way to change all the quotes on a document other than manually changing each one? I write books and use a lot of quotes so that would be an extremely lengthy process.

[anon87010807]

Read my edited answer for getting rid of the curly quotes.

[PatsyCollins]

Thanks.

I think I’ve got it working now.

[AnimyosFox]

By my knowledge, these curly marks (“…”) are the “real” quotation marks, while the straight ones ("…") are inch marks for the imperialistic units. (I’ve read a typography guide in German on Libreoffice’s website that told me that “here [in Germany] or there [anywhere other in the world] [they are] not inch marks”)

To answer your question, I think you can disable the automatic replacement in the settings (Tools > Options > Language settings > English Sentence Checking), and then Search and replace should work.

I’m not very sure about the use of quotation marks, especially in different countries which are known to have their own specific rules and preferences in typography, but I hope I could help you.

Kind regards
Animyos Fox

[AnimyosFox]

So, I’ve looked it up on Wikipedia, and it says this:

I’m not exactly sure what’s right and what’s wrong, that may depend on the country you’re living in.

[anon87010807]

The ‘curly’ quotation marks are the one used by all publishers and printers of books, magazines and newspapers that want to be taken seriously as professionals. Each country has its own rules for them, but in the Netherlands, the typically Dutch style was replaced by the English one a few decades ago.

That said, if your work is intended for home use, you can use whatever rules for quotation marks that you like, including the typewriter ones.

[Villeroy]

menu:Tools>AutoCorrect>Options… tab [Localized Options]
Uncheck the single and double quotes.
This applies to all text written in the respective language in the whole office suite.

Can we turn off the curlies in this forum software too?

[Wanderer]

@Villeroy

Can we turn off the curlies in this forum

It seems curly quotes have one (or more) supporter…

Can typographic quotes be switched off for ask.libreoffice.org?

I saw some code on this site, where typographic quotes replaced the original quotes. Example far down in this question: It contains the following block: SELECT * FROM “tArtist_Song” ORDER BY ( SELECT “Song_Title” FROM “tSongs” WHERE “ID” = “tArtist_Song”.“SongID” ) As this usually breaks the code, you can’t copy/ paste the code back. While I recommend to read anything before you paste, I don’t think it is useful on this site to have this replacement. I am assuming this smart replacement is…

[anon87010807]

First disable the automatic correction of the plain quotation marks by curly ones as described in @Villeroy’s answer. After that, replece the curling ons by straight ons one at a time. Copy & paste each curly mark into the Find box in the Find and Replace dialog box, enter the corresponding plain one in the Replace by box, then Replace all. Remember that all edits, including Replace, are controlled by the autocorrect module, so if you replace curly quotation marks by plain ones, the autocorrect will replace them by curly ones again.