Quotation Marks and Common Mistakes
Text imported from Word, Scrivener or the web often has straight quotes, stray spaces and other small errors. The Checks page in the Revise room finds and fixes them all at once.
Quotation marks
Quotes that are never closed, and the mistakes below, are underlined as you read in Revise ▸ Checks. To fix them all at once, choose As a list at the top right, then Check Quotation Marks. The results list:
- Straight quotes and apostrophes, curled according to context, including elisions such as ’70s, ’til and ’em
- Curly quotes facing the wrong way
- Quotes never closed or opened. These are only listed. A paragraph left open is correct when the next one reopens, as in a speech of several paragraphs.
Choose Fix … Marks… to correct the first two.
Common mistakes
Choose Find Mistakes to check for:
| Check | Fixes |
|---|---|
| Extra spaces | Double spaces, and spaces at the start or end of a paragraph |
| Empty lines between paragraphs | Extra blank lines. Use *** for a scene break. |
| Small letters starting sentences | A paragraph, sentence or speech that starts with a small letter |
| Quotation marks for dialogue | Dialogue in single quotes when the rest uses double, or the reverse. Quotes inside speech get the other kind. |
| Full stops for an ellipsis | Three full stops, or ". . .", become the ellipsis character … (four become "…."). |
| Dash style | Dashes between words set another way from the rest, and double hyphens used as dashes. |
| A.M. and P.M. in small caps | a.m. and p.m. are set in small capitals, as books set them. Capitals, as in "6 P.M.", change only after a time, so "the P.M." stays. |
Only speech is changed: a title or word in quotes, as in pressed ‘Play’, keeps the quotes you gave it. Choose which marks dialogue uses in Dialogue in. Cases that need your judgement, such as a small letter after "?" or in verse, are listed rather than fixed. Choose Fix … to correct the rest.
Full stops for an ellipsis, dashes out of style and a.m. or p.m. not in small caps are also underlined as you read, under Common slips in the column. Choose one, then Fix to change just that one.
Dashes
Choose the project's style in Dashes:
- Closed up em dash: word—word, usual in American publishing
- Spaced em dash: word — word
- Spaced en dash: word – word, usual in British publishing
The choice is kept with the project. Until you choose, dashes are checked against the style most of them already use, and the results say how many there are of each. Open the list of dashes to change to see each one before fixing. En dashes in ranges, such as 1990–95 or London–Paris, and ordinary hyphens are left alone. Next to a quotation mark, as in I was going to—”, only the side touching a word is changed.
Before fixing
Each fix records a checkpoint first ("Before fixing quotes" or "Before cleaning up text"). Only the characters that change are edited, so comments stay attached, and locked documents are passed over.
Both checks cover the manuscript. Turn on Include notes and research to check everything.