Exporting to Final Draft, apostrophes show as " ’ "

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Hello! I realize this problem has been submitted to this forum before, but the answer given didn’t work for me. I’m just trying out Scrivener for the first time, and so far I love it… but unless I can fix this issue, I can’t foresee using it!

When I “Compile Screenplay” and export to the Final Draft File Converter Format, when I open my file in Final Draft 6, the apostrophes show up as the following symbols: ‚Äô

I’ve tried exporting with “Straighten Typographer’s Quotes” clicked, as others have recommended, which seems like it should work, but doesn’t. I’ve also tried turning on and off “Smart Quotes” in Final Draft itself, which didn’t work either. What else could I try? This is very puzzling to me, since I’m normally pretty computer savvy…

Thanks in advance for any suggestions! I guess this is why you have a free 30 day trial!

Adam

2

Straighten smart quotes in Compile Draft uses your typography settings in Preferences, replacing whatever is defined there as a curly quote with straight quotes. Make sure you haven’t changed your typography settings.

All the best,
Keith

3

Aha! I hadn’t touched my typography settings in Preferences, but by unclicking “activate typographer’s quotes” in there, (and retyping the few apostrophes in my test document, to turn them from curly to straight), I was able to export successfully!

Thanks for your help, Keith. I’ll be trying out Scrivener for my next script now, and hopefully purchasing before my 30 days are up!

Adam

4

Despite the suggestions offered I am still experiencing this problem.

I’ve turned off activate typography settings, turned on and off straighten smart quotes but nothing has helped. Any further suggestions?

I’m using Scrivener 1.5.

Thanks in advance, Stacey

5

Have you chosen to straighten quotes in export, too? The only thing that can cause this is non-plain text characters in the draft, such as curly quotes, em-dashes and ellipses, all of which can be cleaned out at the Compile Draft stage using Text Options.
All the best,
Keith

6

I was wondering also about é characters, which when compiled using FCF and opened in Final Draft come out as √©. Eg: fiancée becomes fianc√©e.

Is there something obvious I’m doing wrong (there usually is).

Thanks,

Robin

7

it looks like a utf to ascii conversion. UTF supports multi-byte characters of which é is one. This character is represented by two 8 bit words (called bytes) providing 16 bits total for character representation. ASCII only supports 1 byte or 8 bits. What happens is that the converter reads the 16 bits as 2 separate chars. Hence the mess.

Not that you cared about any of this as much as about how to fix it. Only suggestion I have is use a UTF format for export. RTF “should” work. Not having FD I have no real idea.

8

Thanks for that.

I found a way that worked thanks to your suggestion. I copied and pasted from the rtf document into Final Draft! Yippee!

9

Ah nuts. There goes my reputation.