find and replace quote marks

[Guest]

Hello,
I have a 400-page Word 2000 document which uses single quote marks for
speech. How do I use "find and replace" to change all the single quote marks
to double, without interfering with other uses of apostrophes (i.e., to
change opening and closing quote marks for speech only, not where the mark
appears in abbreviations, such as <there's > etc). I've tried without
success to use wildcards and special characters, and as far as manual changes
- there's alot of speech in the document!
Thanks very much.

 

[Greg Maxey]

John,

This may not be completely thought out, but how about a double pass?
Replace Space' with Space" and then replace 'Space with "Space (where Space
is a single space in your document).

 

[Guest]

You can probably replace all of the beginning quotes with a search for
<space><apostrophe> and replace with <space><quote>. If your convention is
to put ending punctuation inside the quotation, then the ending quotes can be
replaced with a search for <apostrophe><space> and replace with
<quote><space>. If your convention is to put ending punctuation outside the
quotation, then the ending quotes will probably take several search/replace
operations... search for <apostrophe><period> and replace with
<quote><period>, search for <apostrophe><comma> and replace with

 

[Guest]

many (late) thanks to you and greg for your answers; they sent me well down
the right track. if anyone is interested i also realised on the way that you
can do a find and replace for paragraph marks (in the special characters) and
quote marks, therefore catching any quotes that open/close a para; anyway,
cheers
john f