Prose checks › Curly or straight quotes Pro
Prose check: curly or straight quotes“Curly” or "straight"?
You type curly quotes. Then you paste in a paragraph from your notes, and it brings straight ones with it. Falcontext finds the odd ones out.
In Falcontext’s Edit tab, Curly or straight quotes is one part of Punctuation consistency, with dialogue quotes, dashes and ellipses. Each part has its own light, and the worst sets the check’s.
Why they get mixed
Most editors turn quotes curly as you type. Text pasted in from somewhere else (a notes app, an email, an old draft) often keeps its straight ones.
"I won't be," Tomas said.
“I won’t be,” Tomas said.
Which kind wins
Whichever your book mostly has. A straight one becomes the curly one its place needs: opening, closing, or an apostrophe.
Feet and inches (5′10″) aren’t quotes, and are left alone.
How Falcontext checks curly or straight quotes
Guidelines, not rules. Curly or straight is up to you; the odd one out is what it points at.
- Finds
- Quotation marks and apostrophes of the other kind from the rest of the book.
- Traffic light
- All one kind
- 1–5
- 6 or more
- Fix
- Fix all turns every odd one out into your book’s kind, in Google Docs, Atticus, WordPress, Ellipsus or the pad.
Quote marks are on the style sheet the proofing pass keeps for you: every choice made the same way, all through the book.
Where do your straight quotes sneak in from?
Questions about curly or straight quotes.
How do I replace straight quotes with curly quotes?
Falcontext finds the straight ones in a book that mostly has curly quotes (or the other way round), and Fix all changes every one to the right curly mark.
Will it change 5′10″?
No. Feet and inches marks aren’t quotation marks, and are left alone.
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