Apostrophe or '

Question

Hi.
I got a question about apostrophe.
When I copy text including apostrophe ’ from Paratext to MS Word, Powerpoint or Outlook, the apostrophe is converted into &apos ;(without space), which is a HTML entity of apostrophe.
Is there anything I can do to avoid this?
I’m using Paratext 9.2 on Windows 10.
Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

You can check some settings in MS Word to see if this is what is causing you issues.
In Word click the File, then Options. At the left side of the dialog box click Proofing, and then click AutoCorrect Options. The tab you want to look at on the dialog box is called AutoFormat As You Type.

Notice the “Straight Quotes” with “Smart Quotes” check box. This controls whether Word converts your quote marks and apostrophes as you type them. If this is ticked, then when you type apostrophes, they will change to curly ones.

In my experience, this only affects whether Word will allow you to type these characters directly, not whether you can paste them into your document. If it were changing “straight” quotes into “smart” quotes, I wouldn’t be surprised, but it seems to be doing the opposite for you?

It may also help us to know what unicode value is being used for your apostrophe. In Paratext, highlight the apostrophe character and hit Alt+X. This will display the character’s unicode value.

Comments

Thanks. I didn’t realize this website converts HTML entity into a character.
What I’m asking about is not related with the shape of apostrophe or quote.
It’s about the conversion of a character into HTML entity.
As in the below, MS Word or Outlook converts ’ in PTinto &apos ;(without a space).

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I’m sorry, I’m not sure what is causing that. As I understand, &apos ;(without space) is the HTML rendering of unicode 0027. Sometimes you see that kind of thing with email clients or other programs that that modify the HTML.

I would double check the unicode value in Paratext (using alt+x) and I would check which font is being used in Paratext, and check it against the font used in MS Word. Maybe someone else has will have an idea.

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Yes, if you can post the three things Stephen+Katt mentioned here it might help someone figure out your problem. Place the cursor just to the right of the apostrophe in Paratext and type alt-x. It will display the unicode value of that character. The Paratext font can be found in the Language properties of your project. Word does some weird things if its font does not have a character in the right location. You might also make sure that Word is displaying Unicode, and the font is a Unicode font.

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The Unicode value is 0027 as Stephen+Katt wrote.
The font in the project is Times New Roman on PT and Word uses the same one.
When I copy d'a from PT, Word shows d&apos ;a as in the picture above.
I wonder if it happens to those who use non-English Windows.

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Hi anon483457,

What if you paste as "Unformated Text” (Paste Special, or Ctrl-Shift-V (I think))?
Or what if you first paste into Notepad, and then copy it from Notepad into Word?

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Hi LivingField,
Thanks for your reply. Good to hear from you.
Though Ctrl+Shift+V doesn’t work on my Word(Office 365), Keep Text Only after Paste does the job. I’m sure Notepad can be another option.

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I suggest you use a different Unicode character completely. Unicode 0027 is a punctuation character, it is not a word forming alphabetic character. There are a number of alternatives - including 02BC, A78C (glottal). What does the apostrophe represent? Is it a stand alone character, or does it go with the character before?
If you want to contact me to talk more, my Skype name is anon758749.

Answer 2

This happens to me too. When you paste into Word a little pop-up menu should appear (at least it does on mine). After you paste, select “Keep text only” from the pop-up menu and the HTML stuff will turn back into an apostrophe. (I’m doing this on a Mac with Word 16 using Parallels and ParaText 8.)