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Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?



 
 
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  #31  
Old October 8th 17, 07:16 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
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Posts: 11,873
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?

Wolf K wrote:
On 2017-10-08 13:32, Char Jackson wrote:
On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:11:10 +0100, Andy Burns
wrote:

Mayayana wrote:

ASCII is standard in all uses

Except when UK users want a pound sign £ and get a hash symbol # (yes I
realise Americans may call that a pound sign)


I was working with a customer about a year ago, helping him edit the
config file for a piece of his networking gear. He wanted to add a
comment, which in that case is signified by a line starting with the "#"
symbol.

I asked him to type a pound sign. He paused, scanning his keyboard
unsuccessfully, so I helpfully added, "Shift-3". He said, "Oh! You mean
a hashtag!"

Millennials... Thanks, Twitter!


# as "pound sign" is engineering usage. Learned it 61 years ago.... Also
used kip to mean 1,000 lbs.

BTW, robo-instrictions to "enter account number" usually continue with
"... and the pound sign."



Wikipedia files that symbol under "Number Sign".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign

I'd tried a search on Octothorpe, and ended up there.

Paul
Ads
  #32  
Old October 8th 17, 07:45 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?

"Andy Burns" wrote

| ASCII is standard in all uses
|
| Except when UK users want a pound sign £ and get a hash symbol # (yes I
| realise Americans may call that a pound sign)

But isn't your pound sign encoded in the ANSI 128+
range?

I don't say pound for #. It's used in things like price
signs on produce sometimes and people recognize
it in context as meaning pound, but I call it a hash
sign. Microsoft, with their maddening habit of misusing
language in marketing, hijacked it to mean "sharp".
Of course in music it means that, but they named
a programming language C# and then insisted it must
be pronounced "C sharp". It's a sort of passive
aggressive way of forcing people to describe the
language as superior. A play on C++.

That reminds me of a comedian I once saw talking
about pretensious use of language. He was complaining
about a flash-in-the-pan musical group named Sade, but
pronounced Shah-DAY: "Shah-DAY. Give me a break.
S-A-D-E doesn't spell Shah-DAY. I spell my name
D-A-V-E, but I don't pronounce it "Bob".



  #33  
Old October 8th 17, 07:59 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Andy Burns[_6_]
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Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?

Mayayana wrote:

But isn't your pound sign encoded in the ANSI 128+ range?


It is, but back in the early 80's it was pretty common for printers to
have a DIP switch to flick between US and UK mode, so that ASCII code 35
printed a £ instead of a #

  #34  
Old October 8th 17, 08:09 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?

On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:06:03 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Ken Blake
writes:
On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 10:17:22 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , harry newton
writes:
[]
The problem is that my text editor (Gvim) isn't handling the dastardly
characters, so all I want to do is get rid of any character that any normal
text editor can't/won't/doesn't handle.
[]
Of course, some would (and will) say why are you using a text editor
(probably inserting the word "still", to imply you're a dinosaur),




Using a text editor doesn't mean you're a dinosaur. Some of us
occasionally do things like create/modify .bat files.


I said _some_ would say. I'm not one of them (-:




Yes, I know. I understood that. I was merely commenting on the views
of any of the "some" who would say that.
  #35  
Old October 8th 17, 08:14 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?

On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:10:30 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Ken Blake
writes:
[]
The problem is that my text editor (Gvim) isn't handling the dastardly
characters, so all I want to do is get rid of any character that any normal
text editor can't/won't/doesn't handle.



"Normal text editor"? I just pasted curly quotes into Notepad to be
sure it handled curly quotes. It does.

If yours doesn't, I suggest you change your text editor.


The distinction is blurred. To some people, a text editor is something
that doesn't do formatting, bold, italic, underlined, fonts, etcetera
(and thus NotePad is one such); to other people, it is one that only
works with ASCII codes 32 to 126 plus newline. There _are_ places where
only the latter is valid. (Headerless usenet, for example, though ANSI
characters _usually_ get through that unaltered.)



To me, there are word processors (e.g. WordPerfect and Word), text
editors (e.g. Notepad) and *glorified* text editors (e, g. WordPad).

As far as I'm concerned, WordPad is a useless program. I don't need
anything in between a word processor and a text editor. Microsoft
probably provides WordPad for those people who don't want to spend the
money on a real word processor, but I think those people would be much
better off with Open Office or Libre Office.

  #36  
Old October 8th 17, 08:15 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?

On Sun, 08 Oct 2017 11:57:51 -0500, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Sat, 7 Oct 2017 23:30:52 +0000 (UTC), harry newton
wrote:

The problem is that my text editor (Gvim) isn't handling the dastardly
characters, so all I want to do is get rid of any character that any normal
text editor can't/won't/doesn't handle.


The obvious answer is to use another text editor, one that doesn't have
the problems that you object to. I use and recommend Notepad++.



Ditto to all three of those statements.
  #37  
Old October 8th 17, 08:18 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?

On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:11:10 +0100, Andy Burns
wrote:

Mayayana wrote:

ASCII is standard in all uses


Except when UK users want a pound sign £ and get a hash symbol # (yes I
realise Americans may call that a pound sign)




Because of the potential confusion, I always prefer to call it a
"number sign."
  #38  
Old October 8th 17, 08:47 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Jerry Friedman
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Posts: 9
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?

On 10/8/17 12:45 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"Andy Burns" wrote

| ASCII is standard in all uses
|
| Except when UK users want a pound sign £ and get a hash symbol # (yes I
| realise Americans may call that a pound sign)

But isn't your pound sign encoded in the ANSI 128+
range?

I don't say pound for #. It's used in things like price
signs on produce sometimes and people recognize
it in context as meaning pound, but I call it a hash
sign. Microsoft, with their maddening habit of misusing
language in marketing, hijacked it to mean "sharp".
Of course in music it means that, but they named
a programming language C# and then insisted it must
be pronounced "C sharp". It's a sort of passive
aggressive way of forcing people to describe the
language as superior. A play on C++.

That reminds me of a comedian I once saw talking
about pretensious use of language. He was complaining
about a flash-in-the-pan musical group named Sade, but
pronounced Shah-DAY: "Shah-DAY. Give me a break.
S-A-D-E doesn't spell Shah-DAY.


I'm not especially fond of Sade, but they were hardly a flash in the
pan. And that's really how to pronounce Sade Adu's name in Yoruba.

I spell my name
D-A-V-E, but I don't pronounce it "Bob".


He gets points for not saying "Da-VAY".

--
Jerry Friedman
  #39  
Old October 8th 17, 08:57 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Jack Campin
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Posts: 8
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?

That reminds me of a comedian I once saw talking
about pretensious use of language. He was complaining
about a flash-in-the-pan musical group named Sade, but
pronounced Shah-DAY: "Shah-DAY. Give me a break.
S-A-D-E doesn't spell Shah-DAY. I spell my name
D-A-V-E, but I don't pronounce it "Bob".


Sade (pronounced Sha-day) is a Nigerian-born English singer who
pronounces her name that way because that's how you say it in
Yoruba, which is her father's native language. The band was
named after her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sade_%28singer%29

[Followups set to aue]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
e m a i l : j a c k @ c a m p i n . m e . u k
Jack Campin, 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland
mobile 07895 860 060 http://www.campin.me.uk Twitter: JackCampin
  #40  
Old October 8th 17, 09:30 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?

"Jack Campin" wrote

| Sade (pronounced Sha-day) is a Nigerian-born English singer who
| pronounces her name that way because that's how you say it in
| Yoruba, which is her father's native language. The band was
| named after her.
|

Yes, I gathered that. Though the link says her name
is actually Helen and Sade is a nickname based on part
of her middle name.

Whether or not the name is "authentic", the whole
presentation fit and I could see why the comedian
made the joke. The topic was excessive valorizing
of language, especially for marketing purposes. The
way I saw it, from their videos, the band Sade was
marketing a sexy, soulful, stylish, moodiness. The kind
of smoky, elegant swank one might like for background
music in an upscale bar. Hot jazz. Passion. Living to the
hilt. But marketing was arguably all they achieved. (As
does hot jazz, for that matter.) There was an over-the-
top feel to it and the vocalist was not notably sexy
nor soulful.
The name, then, seemed to fit the strategy, thus
being easy pickings for a comedian. That, of course,
is only my musically-untrained personal opinion. I didn't
mean to upset Sade fans. But even if you loved their
music wouldn't you agree they were peddling swank?
I don't imagine for a moment that the French-ish hint
of elegance that "ShahDAY" conveys in English, and
the secondary association with Marquis de Sade, went
unrecognized when they were naming the band. It's
exotic. In other words, if the lead vocalist were in the
habit of using her first name, Helen, something tells
me they wouldn't have named the band "Helen"....
Though I suppose they still could have pronounced
that ShahDAY.


  #41  
Old October 8th 17, 09:35 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Peter Duncanson [BrE]
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Posts: 42
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on Windows?

On Sun, 8 Oct 2017 14:45:15 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

"Andy Burns" wrote

| ASCII is standard in all uses
|
| Except when UK users want a pound sign àand get a hash symbol # (yes I
| realise Americans may call that a pound sign)

But isn't your pound sign encoded in the ANSI 128+
range?

I don't say pound for #. It's used in things like price
signs on produce sometimes and people recognize
it in context as meaning pound, but I call it a hash
sign. Microsoft, with their maddening habit of misusing
language in marketing, hijacked it to mean "sharp".
Of course in music it means that, but they named
a programming language C# and then insisted it must
be pronounced "C sharp". It's a sort of passive
aggressive way of forcing people to describe the
language as superior. A play on C++.

That reminds me of a comedian I once saw talking
about pretensious use of language. He was complaining
about a flash-in-the-pan musical group named Sade, but
pronounced Shah-DAY: "Shah-DAY. Give me a break.
S-A-D-E doesn't spell Shah-DAY. I spell my name
D-A-V-E, but I don't pronounce it "Bob".

Well of course not. D-A-V-E should be pronounced "Dah-VAY".

The band Sade is a bit more than a flash-in-the pan. It won four
Grammys. It can sometimes be difficult to work out whether a mention of
"Sade" refers to the band or its singer Sade from whom it gets its name.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
  #42  
Old October 8th 17, 09:41 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Anton Shepelev
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Posts: 11
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?

Harry Newton

How can we convert those dastardly curly quotes to
straight quotes on Windows?

http://i67.tinypic.com/2h5mjbr.jpg

I like to save into TEXT files on Windows techni-
cal information cut and pasted from disjoint news
articles where the unprintable curly quotes drive
me nuts!


You have my sympathy. The world has grown unicode-
crazy, but I will not forgo my 8-bit plain-text
files (not 7-bit, for I need English and Russian).
Since you are using Vim, the tool you need is al-
ready at your fingertips -- just set up a macro to
replace the offending unicode characters with their
ASCII representations. You might also want to rid
yourself of unicode apostrophes and em-dashes.

P.S.: Never do that for true typography and be chary
with any documents meant for printing.

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ http://preview.tinyurl.com/qcy6mjc [archived]
  #43  
Old October 8th 17, 10:25 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
NotMe
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Posts: 29
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?

On 10/7/2017 6:30 PM, harry newton wrote:

This ponderous Microsoft Office approach might work - but I'm hoping for a
far simpler and less monotlithic solution to the basic problem that
everyone should have if they cut and paste into text from the web.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-curly-quotes-to-straight-quotes-and-vice-versa-017963A0-BC5F-486B-9C9D-0EC511A8FB8F

Doe not,from memory, Paste Special-Plain Text or some equivalent do that?
  #44  
Old October 8th 17, 10:32 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
NotMe
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Posts: 29
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?

On 10/8/2017 4:25 PM, NotMe wrote:
On 10/7/2017 6:30 PM, harry newton wrote:

This ponderous Microsoft Office approach might work - but I'm hoping
for a
far simpler and less monotlithic solution to the basic problem that
everyone should have if they cut and paste into text from the web.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-curly-quotes-to-straight-quotes-and-vice-versa-017963A0-BC5F-486B-9C9D-0EC511A8FB8F

Doe not,from memory, Paste Special-Plain Text or some equivalent do that?

Should be Unformatted Text.
  #45  
Old October 9th 17, 12:33 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.usage.english,alt.windows7.general
Jerry Friedman
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Posts: 9
Default Convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes onWindows?

On 10/7/17 3:38 PM, harry newton wrote:
How can we convert those dastardly curly quotes to straight quotes on
Windows?

....

Since you posted to a.u.e., I thought I'd inform you of the original of
"dastard". It turned out to be different from what I expected, but here
it is anyway.

dastard (n.)
'mid-15c., "one who is lazy or dull;" an English formation on a
French model, probably from */dast/, "dazed," past participle of /dasen/
"to daze" (see /daze/ (v.)) + deprecatory suffix *-ard*. Meaning "one
who shirks from danger" is late 15c.'

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?...search=dastard

--
Jerry Friedman
 




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