I find that, every time I finish typing a piece of Times New Roman font dialogue with an en dash (i.e. -) the following speech marks turn the wrong way round.

It is hard to demonstrate this here, because the font on Writewords has straight quotation marsks. But, what I want to write is something like.

"No! Look out! The car-" where the first set of speechmarks point to the right, and the final set, to the left - thus enclosing the spoken words.

but what I get is,

"No! Look out! The car- and then, the final set of speechmarks are flipped, so that both first and final sets point to the right.

This gets picked up on copyedits by my editor, but it shouldn't happen in the first place, and it's really annoying me. Anyone know how to fix it?

Thanks!

I know what you mean, Leila, and it is really irritating.
My way round it is to put in the closing speech marks, before going back and putting in the dash.

- NaomiM

Leila, haven't got Word up so I can't test it, but I think what I do is hold down alt and typed the single ' twice, and I get the otherway round mark - can't remember where I found it, it's a very ancient pre-WYSYWIG word-processor thing, I think. Also works if you want an apostrophe at the beginning of a word, as in a dropped 'h'

Emma

I cheat and use non-smart quotes, because this was happening to me too.

Non smart quotes? You mean you can just un-check a box and you'll get straight quotes? I might try that. Thanks Emma also for your suggestion.

Yes, it's in Options --> Auto Correct --> Auto Format (or somewhere similar. I have Word 2007 now and I'm lost!) But it's just a matter of ticking/un-ticking a box

I just checked this on my version of Word and you're absolutely right! I've never come across it before, so I obviously haven't ever ended dialogue with a dash.

It doesn't do it if you use an ellipsis, though – "No! Look out! The car ..." gets the speech marks the right way round. Emma's suggestion of putting in the speech mark first then putting the dash in afterwards work too—though why it should work doesn't seem to make any sense. But then it is Microsoft software we're talking about.

You don't have to put the mark in first, though it'll work that way. It's putting the space after the dash which means that Word decides the next ' you put in is the beginning of more speech, not the close of this one. You'll get the speech mark the right way round if the closing speech mark is straight after the dash, but not if you put a space between the two. The alt +' +' thing is a really old hang-over: to do Microsoft justice, I think they leave it in to make it retro-compatible for all the secretaries who learnt wordprocessing (like me) twenty-five years ago, have what they need under their fingers incredibly fast, and really resent having to use mice and faddle around with menus

Two other ways to get a proper curly closing speech mark:

make sure num lock is on, and use the number keypad to do alt+ 0146 for single or alt + 0148 for double

and if you insist on using a mouse, there's always:

Go to insert> special character> and click on what you want

Emma

Om my version of Word the speech mark comes out the wrong way round even though there's no space after the dash.