Scrivener - Preferences, Corrections, Substitutions
-> turn on Use Smart Quotes
Mac OS X System Preferences - Keyboard, Text:
-> Delete any old attempts
-> Add a new item to turn -" into —”
I.E. short dash dumb quote into long dash close smart quote. This worked with the smart quotes option here on and off.
Now when you type one short dash and then one dumb quote you will get the long dash close smart quote you are looking for.
Replacement during compile would presumably work, but I agree it’s good to see something that looks right while working on the text, rather than something that looks wrong until compiled.
Unfortunately, after doing that, when I typed -" Scrivener changed it the quote to a smart quote, facing the wrong way (again) and completely ignored any system settings made to the OS. That’s been the problem from the get go. Scrivener doesn’t change any of the autocorrects of OS X for me at all.
Yosemite and latest Scrivener here as well. I haven’t tried replacing during compile yet as I’m not ready to compile, but it’s something I plan to try. I can get the replacements to work in non-Scrivener programs with the OS X autocorrects, but Scrivener is stubborn and refuses.
I opened the OS X Keyboard prefs, Scrivener prefs, OS X Notepad and Scrivener document and tried all the combinations until it worked. If Scrivener isn’t obeying the OS X keyboard replacements, I wonder if there’s a preference file somewhere that needs to be deleted.
Hello. I have been fretting about this same issue (after compiling, my em dash quote mark situation seemed FUBAR… always curling the wrong way.) Drove me crazy and I kept fixing them individually.
But then I found a workaround and am sharing it in case it’s helpful to the OP and to others.
Here’s what I do:
In Scrivener Compile > Transformations > Check “Straighten Smart Quotes”
In MS Word (which I use to print and share my manuscript), Edit > Find > Advanced Find & Replace > enter a quotation mark (") alone in find (it’s okay if it looks straight or curly, doesn’t seem to matter, and then another quotation mark (") in the replace field > Replace All
I couldn’t believe when it automatically solved all the qte marks, making them curl the right way… even after em dashes!
Hope that’s useful. I wrote it all out for myself and pinned it to the bulletin board above my desk. I know it’s not a super and total fix, but I’m just happy to have a workaround at this point.
That works some of the time, but I still found places that it didn’t correct. Word’s find & replace feature is a bit buggy. It doesn’t always replace 100% of the instances you search for, especially in documents that are 400+ pages. Use it with care.
