OpenOffice & Curly Quotes

My laptop has OpenOffice, installed only a few days ago. Its default in the Writer function (which mimics Word2003 quite well) was straight quotation marks, both single and double. Perfect.

I was writing in a new document, my quotes just the way I wanted them, when I must have made a keystroke which changed my double quotation marks to curly ones. (The single quote is still straight.) I didn't go to a menu or preference or option setting where I checked, unchecked, or otherwise chose the change. It was literally a keystroke, maybe even two, while writing text and voila!

After spending far too much time noodling around trying to change it back, I'm nowhere. Except AW, where all things are possible.

Maryn, with hopeful puppy-dog eyes

My understanding is that most publishers prefer the straight quotes. They're not going to freak out over it, but I aim to please.

The Kid was over last night and found the way to change the default back to straight (I think it was Format, Autoformat, Options, then a check-box), but we still can't figure out what keystroke changed them to curly in the first place. Probably Ctrl-something, but man, I tried everything and couldn't reverse it.

If you decide to lose your curly quotes in something already written, a simple search-and-replace does the job. You do have to copy and paste an open-quote curly in the find part, replace it with a straight, and do the same for the close-quote curly, since they're two different characters.

Maryn, straight-shooter

Probably that was it! I was silly, assuming the fact that I'd had OO for about 36 hours was in any way a part of my difficulty.

Even though it's a lot like Word, I still have some adapting to do.

Maryn, old and slow