Microsoft WORD formatting....

[Rev. Austin]

Anyone know how to stop Word putting an open quotation mark after a hypen/dash?  thanxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[delph_ambi]

How odd. Mine doesn't do that. I can only suggest you go to the auto-formatting options and find and un-tick the offending box.

[leatherdykeuk]

This isn't a comes-as-standard option -- not on w2003 anyway -- so what delph said.

[Pharosian]

Rev, I've never heard of Word doing that before, BUT it does sound as though it may somehow have put -" (or whatever it looks like) into the dictionary/table it uses for auto-correction. The user is allowed to add items to that, and you may have done it inadvertently.

I'd open the "Auto-Correct" dialog box (probably from the Tools menu unless you're using a new version of Word with that gawdawful "ribbon" nonsense) and look in the table to see if you've accidentally added -" or --" into its list.

A few years ago, I was writing a lot of software test cases where I frequently needed to use the word "field" (as in "Enter some text in the Address field") and I could NOT stop typing "filed" instead of "field" so I actually inserted an auto-correct entry into my table such that it changed filed to field for me on the fly. It was on my work computer, and I never needed to use the word "filed" so it was worth it to save myself having to backspace and retype all the time.

[Ed]

I'm literally only guessing here, but the only problem I've ever had with Word is a corrupted global template. We all just open up word and start typing, but apparently what you're supposed to do is set up the template you're going to be using each time. The upshot is the base template changes with each document type we put through it, so it becomes massive. I had it get so big it was slowing the whole computer. Eventually it led to it crashing all the time.

Deleting your normal.dot template fixes most things. You can find instructions here -- http://www.personal-computer-tutor.com/NNTWord.htm

[Rev. Austin]

Hmm.  I did the autocorrect thing but it isn't actually auto-correcting  can someone remind me again why I want to go back to using Word over Open Office? 

[Rev. Austin]

Whoops ignore that.   I set Word to replace -" (open quotation mark) with -" (closed quoatation mark), but it didn't do anything.  Then, I set it to replace -" (closed quotation mark) with -" (closed quotation mark) and it, er, works.  Very strange, but at least it's sorted.  Thanks guys!

[Pharosian]

Rev, your initial question seems to have been misleading. It appeared from the way you stated the question that Word was just putting a quotation mark after every hyphen you typed.

Now, after reading your recent post, it appears that it was typing an open quote mark instead of a close quote mark in the case when you ended a bit of dialogue with a hyphen and YOU TYPED a quotation mark. Big difference.   

[Rev. Austin]

Oh yeah.  Whoops  but the end result is still the same, so fuggedabowit