We have lengthy legal submissions (Word documents - 100-plus pages) containing many double and single quotation marks. We receive input into these documents from many sources; some of the input comes with smart quotation marks, some with straight. We are not in a position to ask all the sources to change their computer settings to produce straight quotation marks. In the past, we have always (successfully) made the marks consistent when finalizing the document using the Search and Replace function (i.e. search for double quotation marks, replace with ZZZZ, search for ZZZZ, replace with double quotation marks). The last two times I did this, most, but not all, of the quotation marks were removed when doing the second Replace. In the first document where there was a problem, when I replaced the ZZZZ with double quotation marks, about 75% of the quotation marks disappeared. The approx. 25% left were a mixture of straight and smart. In the most recent document using the same method, I first replaced the double quotation marks, of which there were over 750, and this seemed to work okay. I then replaced the single quotation marks, of which there were close to 500, and most of these were removed, as was the space they took up (so that, for example, "client's" became "clients"). How do we prevent this from happening? Is there a better way to make the universal change to the style of quotation marks/apostrophes, which I have to do when I am finalizing the document? As I said, starting out with them all in the same style is not an option. I do hope someone can come up with a solution as this is giving us quite a headache!
Note:
My Word setting is to straight quotes. When I copy text from outside sources into the master document that has smart quotes, these are not automatically changed to straight quotes (i.e. my setting); they remain as smart. I also cannot do a search on smart quotes, I can only do a search on quotes in general, regardless of whether they are smart or straight. Changing the style of quotation marks in sections before pasting them into the master document would not solve the problem, as edits can be made by outside sources right up until the last minute. There is not time then to click through every quotation mark to see if there are still any smart ones left. I really need a fix to this!
