A normal search for a single or double quote mark will bring up curly (“smart”) quotes/apostrophes as well as straight (dumb) ones. To search only for the straight ones, open the search dialogue box, enable Wildcards searching, and search for ^034 (double quotes) ^039 (single quote) With thanks to Graham Mayor, originally cited at pcreview.
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My cousin, a music producer, told me: sure it’s possible to polish a turd. First you bake it, then lacquer it. I reflect on these words as I attempt to language polish the output of Google translate. I wonder what subtle principles of linguistics and aesthetics — principles of which we as sentient language speakers […]
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I’m switching a set of papers from Chicago notes-bibliography style with full bibliography to Chicago notes-bibliography style without full bibliography. As any fule no, this will mean expanding the first occurence of the reference item in the notes from shortened to full form (among other things). Since it’s May, and a sunny evening, it’s important […]
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‘Ibid.’ is an abbreviation for ‘ibidem‘ (‘in the same place’). The full stop in ‘ibid.’ is therefore obligatory. But it can be dashed hard to spot. To automate the search (in MS Word), hit Cntrl-F to bring up the Find/Replace box, enable Wildcards, and enter: ibid[!.] in the find box. This little string finds instances […]
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The sales text for a high-Google-ranked automatic editing tool gives us more information about the quality of the product than the writers presumably intended. It won’t be Utopian to say that every time whatever we write, whether a memo, report or a research material, is precise, accurate and effective in single go. It is possible […]
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