capitalising after quotation marks

[Nelli0]

Since I joined PCReview a couple of days ago I've already been helped to solve a Word problem that's been going on for months. So I thought I'd try to get help with another Word 2007 annoyance.

As a writer I am constantly using quotation/speech marks. How can I get Word to automatically capitalise after a full stop and end quotes. I'm not always watching what's going up on screen so it's very annoying to find I have to backtrack and put in capitals. I've tried manually to add quote marks plus each letter of the alphabet in Options but Word doesn't want to know.

Can anyone else suggest a fix?

 

[alow]

If you're talking about a sentence set up like the following, it should capitalize the underlined T automatically after you press space after the word:
"This is a sentence." This is a second sentence.
If that's not happening, it's probably an AutoCorrect option turned off. Does Word automatically capitalize the first letter of sentences normally?

 

[nivrip]

As a writer I am constantly using quotation/speech marks. How can I get Word to automatically capitalise after a full stop and end quotes. I'm not always watching what's going up on screen so it's very annoying to find I have to backtrack and put in capitals. I've tried manually to add quote marks plus each letter of the alphabet in Options but Word doesn't want to know.

Can anyone else suggest a fix?

When you say "after a full stop and end quotes" I assume that you mean the two of them together and not as two separate instances of failure to get the capital letter.

I've just tried doing what you are trying to do in Word 2007. With a full stop and end quotes (together) I find that the next letter is automatically capitalised as long as there is a space between end quote and the next letter. I assume that after a simple full stop that you get a capital for the next letter.

I checked in Word Options>Proofing>AutoCorrect Options>AutoCorrect that Capitalize First Letter Of Sentences is ticked. It might be worth unticking it, pressing OK and then going in again and reticking it and then OK.

It seems to work fine for me.

 

[Taffycat]

I understand what NelliO is asking. She wishes to be able to capitalise not only the first letter of a new sentence, but also the first letter, following an opening quote. Example coloured red below. Is that correct NelliO?

"Who did that?" Billy asked. "My aunt will be furious when she sees all that mud!"

I've been checking around, but so far, haven't found a solution to this one....

 

[Nelli0]

Taffycat, you have it exactly. I know how to set Word to capitalise a new sentence (sometimes it's a bit temperamental but it usually works) but it's when there isn't a space after the quote. I'm sure there must be a solution somewhere. Perhaps MS can suggest one. If not maybe they can fix it because there must be many people like me who find it annoying.

 

[alow]

In Word itself, that's the way they designed it to work, with the reasoning (I think) that quotes aren't always used to begin a sentence. For it to be coded into Word itself, it would probably end up capitalizing every letter after a quote, even mid-sentence. Along the lines you already tried, you could try adding
. "A
For every letter to auto correct for
. "a

A Google search comes up pretty empty for a real answer on this though.

 

[nivrip]

Problem is that you don't always want a capital after the opening quotes so I don't see a way that will work every time.

 

[Nelli0]

I've already gone through Options to auto correct "a to "A and so on. It doesn't work though logic says it should. After all if you can add names and technical words to autocorrect why not "a?
It doesn't have to work every time, nivrip, but most of the time when writing dialogue it is definitely needed.
Oh well, I'll just have to wait until Microsoft decide it would be a good and useful idea. Thanks for trying to help.
By the way, alow, your other Word fix remains constant. I'm truly grateful.