Hi,
I occasionally have dialogue in which the character is interrupted before completing the sentence, and I use a dash to signify the break/end of the dialogue, and want to follow the dash by a (closed) curly quote.
However, when I try this, I always get the curly quote displaying the wrong way around (i.e., it displays as an opening quote; the one that precedes and signals the start of the dialogue).
Is there any way to do what I am trying to do in Scrivener?
Thanks for any replies.
Not sure if this is any help to you but in the āOptionsā there is a setting that allows you to create your own substitutions.
Any good to you?
Otherwise somebody with more knowledge will probably be along soon.
Iāve noticed this annoyance too. Donāt remember it doing this in V1, which makes me ponder whether itās a bug in V3?
As a work around Iām adding the closing quote mark next to the interrupted word, then add the dash between them.
Thanks, AussieDoc (and sorry about the late reply).
I actually prefer ardenhagās solution of formatting the text without the dash, and then adding the dash afterwards.
Thanks, ardenhag.
Love this solution.
I noticed this when typeing dialog in an ordinary manuscript. While the double dash properly turns into an em-dash, when Iām closing a dialog, scrivener places an open-quote rather than a proper close-quote.
So dialog like
āButāā
goes open-quote followed by But em-dash and then ends with another open-quote rather than the correct close -uote to be expected from smart quotes.
Anyone else notice this?
Yep.
Post from last weekā¦
Not sure itās been noticed so shall report it.
Thanks! Glad to know its consistent. 
Iāve been solving it by typing a space and an āxā after the dash followed by the close quote and then delete the space and then āxā to force the correct glyph.
That is basically what I do, too.
I use a TextExpander snippet to get:
ā ā (space + em-dash + non-breaking space + closing curly quote)
Thatās for a 2 keystroke shortcut:
; followed by -
(I use spaces around em-dashes, AP style.)
TextExpander saves me tons of grief over em-dash, ellipsis, curly quotes, spelling, diacritical marks, and a lot more.
hmm. I stopped looking when noting the canāt-stop-cookies-funny-business-hard-sell-ads-first presentation of TextExpanderās website, and that they want a large fraction of Scrivenerās priceā¦per year subscription.
There are a lot of alternatives apparent, and AutoHotKey which has been mentioned here a lot seems very popular: https://alternativeto.net/software/textexpander/
I used to use TextExpander quite a bit. I like their ability to keep shortcuts synched across my devices.
Any indication whether a true fix is in the works for this? I was working on a document in Scriv1 today that I never exported and noticedāto my surprise, now that Iām used to Scriv3āthat the closing quotation mark turned the correct way (when since making the switch, Iāve told myself I must have just started using the construction more and thatās why it was suddenly so much more annoying). I canāt find any difference in the settings between the two apps, making it pretty clearly a coding issue in Scriv3. Adding an extra character before the " has been my workaround, but I literally NEVER remember I have to do that until Iām glaring at the stupid wrong-way-round marks, so using a text expander to get the right marks the first time isnāt likely to be any more effective. LOL
We keep having this come up in the L&L forums - closing quote after an em dash doesnāt display, it comes up as an opening quote. This is due to a buglet(?) in the QT editor that has been in existence since the start of the Scrivener 3 beta process and has yet to be fixed. The buglet(?) was reported during the beta process and should be on file, butā¦
Using smart quotes:
āHelpāā
Using a single dash:
āHelp-ā
Using a triple dash:
āHelpāā
With a space:
āHelpā ā
With spaces:
āHelp ā ā
Corrected (adding the em dash after closing the quotes):
āHelp ā ā
Using ellipses:
āHelpā¦ā
Using straight quotes:
āHelpāā
Maybe switching off the āUse Smart Quotesā option and letting the compile do the correction is the best bet.
No idea if a fix is in the works but L&L suggested using the substitution feature as a workaround so you donāt have to remember to correct it.
Copy & pasted from their email:
Go to File > Options > Corrections > Corrections
Click the ā+ā to add a new substitution
Click the āā¦ā button to open the Character Map
Copy and paste the correct characters into the āReplaceā and āWithā fields from the character map. N.B. make sure you choose the correct characters for the em-dash and quotes, as there are loads of similar characters. Iāve circled them in the screenshot of the character map. Obviously, choose single or double quotes depending on your preference.
Click āOKā all the way through and restart Scrivener.
Came here to report this same bug. Was hoping it would be fixed in the scrivener 3.1 update, but no luck. Itās a fairly common combination so I would think more people would be bothered by this.
It was a bug that was noted during the beta period, but I believe that itās both a) relatively down the priority list (because there are workarounds) and b) buried fairly deep into the Qt text subsystem so would be hard to override programmatically and relies on getting the upstream Qt developers to fix in a later release of Qt which then has to be rolled back into Scrivener.
Itās still open, it just might be a while.
This is AWESOMEāthank you!
I donāt think this is a Qt bug. QTextEdit doesnāt have this kind of autocorrection feature built in. They probably override the QTextEditās keyPressEvent to insert the smart quote. All they need to do is add a check to the punctuation checks they already have, using QTextDocument.characterAt() to see if the previous character is any kind of dash.
That said, I know Scrivener uses a heavily customized textedit, so maybe itās not so easy for them. Thereās also the problem of text like āDialogāāsome interruptionāāmore dialog.ā Though I think āInterrupted dialogāā is way more common.
Agree with Shaun that the mid-quotation interruption instance is an issue for the substitution fix.
Also, I just tried the substitution fix posted above and it doesnāt seem to be working for me now, I tried various instances of
āā
or
āā
And similar character combinations, copying both from my Scrivener text as well as non-rich plaintext editors and couldnāt get it functioning well for me. So still hoping for a software-level fix.
