For Word Gurus: How to Find Missing Quotation Marks

Doug Johnson · Feb 7, 2009

I have 3455 left quotation marks and 3456 right quotation marks in my manuscript. Obviously, that's not right. Is there any way to have Word find the right quotation mark that lacks a corresponding left quotation mark?

Search right quotation mark - a character string of any length that does not have a left quotation mark - right quotation mark would do the trick but I can't figure out the expression for "a character string of any length that does not have a left quotation mark." There might be other ways to do it too. If you can figure this out, you get my vote for all time greatest AW Word guru.

Thanks.

Williebee · Feb 7, 2009

Well. That's just weird.

I take it that the spelling/grammar check didn't find this?

hmm, I'll think on this a bit. And check back to see if somebody answers it.

Sophia · Feb 7, 2009

I don't know about Word, but there are programs such as Notepad ++ that will highlight quotation mark pairs and show you where one of the pair is missing. If you don't get an answer for Word, you might try downloading it (it's free) and pasting your document into it.

Williebee · Feb 7, 2009

What version of Word are you using, please?

Clair Dickson · Feb 7, 2009

Search for " (Not curly, just as you see here.) That's where your missing marks went-- you're using "Smart Quotes" Personally, I don't think they're very smart at all and I just use plain straight, regular average-intelligence quotes.

If you can't get your doc to use a straight quote, then go to Insert Symbol to find one. Then copy and paste into the Find Box.

Doug Johnson · Feb 7, 2009

Word 2003. (Thanks Clair, but just so I'm clear, I can find the 6000 plus ones that are where they are supposed to be. The problem is that I forgot to type two at the beginning of a quote and would like to find them without proofing the entire manuscript, or more accurately, just finished proofing half the manuscript and didn't find the ones that I know must be missing because when I replaced dumb quotes with smart quotes and searched I have more right ones than left ones.)

To answer Willie I tend to ignore the green lines, because I believe I'm a literary genius

and should be able to use a sentence fragment when I blood well feel like it, but hitting "abc" before submitting would be one solution. However, it's a psychological thing. I don't know which one of the green lines are mistakes. Therefore, I can ignore them, but I know I have gotten my quotation marks wrong and can't ignore it. (Plus I tend to go on long anti Bill Gates rants anytime I can't get my computer to do what I want it to do.)

Any help resolving my Neurosis is much appreciated.

Clair Dickson · Feb 7, 2009

If you use "find next" in your search for, say, left quotes, then you will be taken to the spot where the left quote is. Then check for the right (you can usually just drag the find box out of the way to see if the quote is there or not, insert quote, then go back to the find box and hit "Find Next" again.

Far as I know, this is the only way to check for missing quotes. (I misunderstood what you were asking, sorry.)

Matera the Mad · Feb 7, 2009

I would definitely try pasting into a sensible text editor that can discern paired items.

Now ask me to give one good reason why I do separate chapters

Priene · Feb 8, 2009

If something like Notepad++ doesn't do the job, then the solution is repeated splitting of the file. Use copy and paste to put your text into two separate files. One of them will have an odd number of quotation marks. Repeat the splitting process on that one. Eventually (and it shouldn't take too long as the file size is divided by two with each iteration) the file with the odd number will be small enough to identify the mistake visually.

Sophia · Feb 8, 2009

Another way might be to go to Tools --> Spelling and Grammar. There is a section at the bottom of that tab for Grammar. Tick "Check grammar as you type". In the drop-down menu next to it for "Writing style:" select Grammar only, and then click the settings button.

Take a note of what it normally looks for in case you want to return it those settings, and then untick everything but the "Punctuation" box under the grammar section and the "Punctuation - stylistic suggestions" from the style section. See if this flags up your missing punctuation mark. If it doesn't, maybe try some of the other selections.

qwerty · Feb 8, 2009

Clair Dickson said:
If you use "find next" in your search for, say, left quotes, then you will be taken to the spot where the left quote is. Then check for the right

Sounds tedious, I know, but I think Clair probably has the only answer.

Good luck.

dpaterso · Feb 8, 2009

Doug Johnson said:
I have 3455 left quotation marks and 3456 right quotation marks in my manuscript.

One missing quote?! Big deal, not worth the effort! It'll turn up eventually.

If I were paranoid about this then I'd write a little program (probably in REXX, I'm not savvy enough with Word) to go through my plain text mss. and check that every quote that's followed by a non-space character is matched by a quote that's followed by a space.

-Derek

Doug Johnson · Feb 8, 2009

ElaraSophia said:
Another way might be to go to Tools --> Spelling and Grammar. There is a section at the bottom of that tab for Grammar. Tick "Check grammar as you type". In the drop-down menu next to it for "Writing style:" select Grammar only, and then click the settings button.

Take a note of what it normally looks for in case you want to return it those settings, and then untick everything but the "Punctuation" box under the grammar section and the "Punctuation - stylistic suggestions" from the style section. See if this flags up your missing punctuation mark. If it doesn't, maybe try some of the other selections.

Great suggestion, but it looks like word doesn't give a green line for a missing quotation. But at least I turned off the annoying fragment "feature", so thanks.

Roger J Carlson · Feb 8, 2009

Doug Johnson said:
Great suggestion, but it looks like word doesn't give a green line for a missing quotation. But at least I turned off the annoying fragment "feature", so thanks.

Actually, it does, but it puts the green line at the *end* of the sentence, under the period and following space(s).

Regardless, the following macro *should* find your missing end quote. It is extremely crude and not at all what I would call a robust macro, but it should work.

Open your Visual Basic editor (Tools > Macro > Visual Basic Editor) and paste in the following code:

Code:

Sub FindMissingCloseQuote()
Do
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = """"
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
    If Selection <> " " Then
 
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
            Selection.Find.Execute
            Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
            Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
 
            If Selection <> " " Then
                MsgBox "Close quote missing from previous sentence"
                Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
                Exit Sub
            End If
        Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
    End If
Loop
End Sub

Then to run it, be sure your cursor is at the beginning of the document, then go to Tools > Macro > Macros... select FindMissingCloseQuote and click Run

Fade · Feb 8, 2009

Doug Johnson said:
I have 3455 left quotation marks and 3456 right quotation marks in my manuscript. Obviously, that's not right. Is there any way to have Word find the right quotation mark that lacks a corresponding left quotation mark?

Search right quotation mark - a character string of any length that does not have a left quotation mark - right quotation mark would do the trick but I can't figure out the expression for "a character string of any length that does not have a left quotation mark." There might be other ways to do it too. If you can figure this out, you get my vote for all time greatest AW Word guru.

Thanks.

It may not be a problem with missing one. For example, sometimes when I'm reading I see a character talking for a long time, like telling a story, and they say (this is all random, by the way),

"I was walking down the street to fetch the newspaper when I saw my friend Suzy riding her bicycle. She looked up at me. 'Hey, Devon, what are you doing here?' she asked. [Notice that there is no left quotation mark here because the character continues telling the story out loud.]
" 'Not much', I resonded." [Left quotation signals that character is ending story.

So you would have one more right quotation mark than left.

Doug Johnson · Feb 8, 2009

Fade, except the way I do it is "She told me to 'get lost.'"

Roger you da man. Except that appears to identify every correct usage of "". (Wish I could help with the debugging, but you are in way over my head.)

Roger J Carlson · Feb 9, 2009

Doug Johnson said:
Roger you da man. Except that appears to identify every correct usage of "". (Wish I could help with the debugging, but you are in way over my head.)

Well, it's sort of a brain-dead routine. When you start it, the cursor must be in front of the first begin quote, or it gets all off. It should only stop when the sequence of proper begin - end quote fails. It stops at the next begin quote and tells you it failed in the previous sentence.

At least, that's the theory. It worked on my test file. I may get a chance to look at it later and make it more robust.

Doug Johnson · Feb 9, 2009

Maybe I lost the smart quotes when I copied. Let me try replacing the ".

For Word Gurus: How to Find Missing Quotation Marks

Doug Johnson

Williebee

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Sophia

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Clair Dickson

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Doug Johnson

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