Smart Quotes with Dragon Naturally Speaking

Jerry very often uses Dragon Naturally Speaking to create documents. When he does, it produces straight quote marks and apostrophes instead of "smart" ones. Jerry finds it a bother to go through the laborious Find and Replace process every time he "speaks" text into the document, so he wonders if there is a setting that will fix this or, perhaps, a faster way than using Find and Replace all the time.

There are obviously two players in the mix here: Word and Dragon Naturally Speaking. For the part of the latter, ever since version 13 the program will transcribe the correct quotes (regular or smart) if you have smart quotes turned on in Word. There are reports that Dragon doesn't use the correct quotes if you are using Word as your editor for Outlook e-mails.

If you are using an older version of Dragon (or you are using it to compose e-mails), then you could create a special word in the program that results in an opening smart quote being typed and another word that enters a closing smart quote. That way you could "speak" the quotes, much as you would speak other punctuation marks.

Another approach is to use Find and Replace to convert your regular quotes to smart quotes. As long (again) as you have smart quotes turned on in Word, you should be able to search for quote marks (") and replace with quote marks ("). When you click on Replace All, they are all changed to smart quotes. You can do the same operation for apostrophes to make them "smart," as well. This process could also be automated through the use of a macro, if desired.

Sub ReplaceQuotes()
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = """"
        .Replacement.Text = """"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "'"
        .Replacement.Text = "'"
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

A couple of times in this tip I've mentioned making sure that smart quotes are turned on in Word. You can check that this is the case by following these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 and later versions display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click Proofing at the left side of the dialog box.
3. Click the AutoCorrect Options button. Word displays the AutoCorrect dialog box.
4. Display the AutoFormat As You Type tab. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The AutoFormat As You Type tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box.

5. Make sure that the Straight Quotes with Smart Quotes check box is selected.
6. Display the AutoFormat tab. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The AutoFormat tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box.

7. Make sure that the Straight Quotes with Smart Quotes check box is selected.
8. Click OK.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (767) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016.