Apostrophes for date abbreviations

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
,
1

I pretty regularly need to write years in the form '02 or decades in the form '70s.
I’ve found that the way Scrivener (MacOS 11.5.2, Scriv 3.2.2) deals with these varies.
In either case, it should be (for my purposes) the equivalent of a closing single apostrophe. Sometimes that’s what I get, sometimes not (it will be an opening single apostrophe), and I’m not sure why.
I have Prefs/Corrections/Punctuation set to Use smart quotes.
Any ideas?

2

One way is to create snippets in TextExpander or Keyboard Maestro (or equivalent) to change '1, '2, etc. to the desired quote followed by 1, 2, or …

3

Thanks bob, I tried this with the system’s own Prefs/Keyboard/Text replace-with facility.

But even if you put in for example Replace open-quote-5 and With close-quote-5, it doesn’t work.

Seems that this only sees quotes as dumb.

I don’t use TextExpander or Keyboard Maestro and it’s not worth investing in them just for this.

Anyone got any other ideas?

4

A-Text is free and does the same sort of thing as TextExpander, etc.

On the other hand, Shift-Opt-] gives you close-single quote, and that’s how i would enter it … that’s on a UK keyboard. I suspect the international keyboard is the same; if you have a different keyboard setting, you can use “Keyboard Viewer from the Keyboard menu, if you have set that up, to look for where it is.

HTH

Mark

1 Like
5

Try Shift-Opt-] in the same Preferences dialog.

6

Xiamenese, if you mean aText, that’s $5. So maybe worth a whirl on its 21-day free trial.

I do know about shift-alt-] but I’m trying to automate the “correction” as I type, not have to type a key combo.

Drmajorbob again, I tried the key combo rather than pasting into the Prefs dialogue, but still doesn’t work.

Stumped.

7

And… soon as I typed the word “stumped” I thought hold on, Alfred is standing by and not particularly busy.

So I used Alf’s Snippets feature, entering [open single quote]5 in Keyword and shift-alt-]5 in Snippet. It works!

Now done for 0 through 9 and all fine and dandy.

I must say I probably underuse Alfred, but I often find he’s full of useful facilties tucked away under his hat. Wished I’d thought of him earlier.