Stop Microsoft Word using Smart or Curly Quotes

Details on how to stop Microsoft Word from automatically converting straight quotes in to curly quotes.

This is particularly useful if you write a lot of content for the web.

When you type or paste text in to Microsoft Word any quotes or apostrophes to fancy curly quotes which can sometimes cause problems if you want to export the copy you are writing for use in XML feeds for example.

If all the machines that will be reading the copy use Unicode you will probably be OK but this is often not the case.

Word makes use of it's auto format features to convert the quotes as you type but this can be turned off. To stop this happening on a case by case basis press CTRL and Z immediately after typing the quote make and it will be changed back to a standard straight quote. This would need to be done every time you enter a quote make though so is not very efficient.

To permanently turn this feature off go to Tools-Auto Correct Options... (the exact place may vary depending on your version of Word). In the window that opens un tick the relevant boxes on both the AutoFormat as you Type tab and the AutoFormat tab. Next time you type something you should be left with plain straight quotes. This will only affect future typing and not anything that you already have in your document.

Microsoft  Word,  Smart  Quotes,  Curly  Quotes,  Straight  Quotes,  Apostrophes