ok, tech savvy folks...

[Fel]

ok, so, I've been editing the old, OLD files from book 1, and I've run into a relatively pointless yet aggravating problem.

These files were originally done in Win 95 Wordpad when I transcribed them out of the handwritten spirals, and they've been ported up over the years, and the issue I'm having is with font appearance. In particular, the quotation marks.

The original files have neutral, non-directional quotation marks, while any edits I do, like adding or removing lines or closing missed quotes, are directional, which constitutes a different-appearing font.

This is purely cosmetic, but is driving me nuts, as I can't alter the quotes to one appearance. I've tried copy/past, I've tried saving the files as up-to-date Word files, but nothing either changes new quotes into the older-appearing ones or converts the old font into the updated font that Word uses.

I'd prefer to just change the fonts to current Word appearance.

Any idea of how to fix this?

[tempmine]

Hi,
hope this helps.
Highlight all the text; there is an option under edit or you can do it by hand. then change the font; there is an option under format. then deselect the text. save the file.
or
Go to the file menu select save as. in the window that pops up at the bottom there is a drop down box select it and chose text document msdos format. save the file. just a note this second option will remove all formatting that is not space or tab based. ie bold text, italic text, different font sizes and types, and justification.

Tempmine

[storyreader2005]

Hi,
hope this helps.
Highlight all the text; there is an option under edit or you can do it by hand. then change the font; there is an option under format. then deselect the text. save the file.

Like tempmine said, select all and choose one font (Times New Roman, Arial, etc.) and in MS Word you *might* have to change the style to clear. That will set the entire document to use one font and the clear will remove ALL formatting (bold, italics, basically like Temp's second suggestion about saving in a ms-dos format).

Then to change the old ' or " you can do a "find & replace" for any ' or " and if you're using MS word you can type the ' or " in replace with field and Word will automatically change it to the correct “What don’t ‘you’ need?”

[Fel]

ok, using find and replace got it. Thanks guys.

Given I have some stuff to do this week, start looking for the updated, edited files to start appearing at the end of the week. I'll probably be releasing one by one, since not only am I going through and spellchecking, then looking up the master "correct" list and see if there are any corrections to be done in that chapter, I am also reading each chapter and occasionally adding a new line or blurb or clarifying something a little better.

As a side note, I'll be starting Legacy after I finish the first batch of files, then I'll just be releasing updated old chapters between new chapters.

[Andygal]

cool Fel, will be looking forward to both edits and new stuff.

[Quindo Ma]

Just in case you are not aware of this issue, Word has by default an activated text "beautification" (correction) option that will replace typed apostrophes or quotation marks with those directional marks. The same goes with things like text arrows, smilies, that triple dot sentence fade out "...", and also auto correction of various mistyped words.
This option can be found in the "Tools"/"Options"/"AutoCorrect" menu. If you go there, you can copy all those things you want to have neutral out, then do a strict "Replace With", and have everything the same. If you now remove those auto-corrections (should be under the option "Replace text as you type"), you will not be bothered with the directional marks again (I also like to disable the above mentioned triple dots, which is replaced by a single character that just looks like three dots). You could also just turn off the option entirely, and manually run the spell checker, which is more tedious, but less likely to allow for wrongly replaced words or chars.

Regards
Quin

[gcomyn]

What I do when I'm editing files:

If it's editing HTML, I stop the "beautification" of the text. I use Word XP, so I go to Tools/AutoCorrect Options, and Then AutoFormat As You Type, and deselect Replace as you type: "Straight Quotes" with "smart quotes"

then I use find/replace, and replace all of the quotes and apostrophes.

If I'm editing for printing purposes, I select the Replace as you type: "Straight Quotes" with "smart quotes", and find/replace the quotes/apostrophes.

That way, I get them all. I don't select any text before the find/replace segment.

Gcomyn