Finale Forum

This seems like a small thing, but I would LOVE it if quotation marks in lyrics automatically converted to smart quotes. Apostrophes as well.

Currently I get tick marks (" and '), and I have to manually use ALT+0147 (“), ALT+0148 (”), and ALT+0146 (’) to get smart quotes.

Here's hoping...

Jari had a plugin for this prior to v25. I don't see it yet in a v25 beta form. There's a Finalescript for changing curly quotes back to straight quotes. I am not sure how to write a script to do the reverse, since there's only one straight quote character, but 2 different curly ones. I'm sure there's a way. Someone here must know the steps.

Zuill

P.S.: This Finalescript seems to do it. It works in my simple example. It changes the straight quote to all left sided smart quotes, then it changes the left sided smart quote followed by a space to a right sided quote followed by a space. It may not work for your situation, but it's worth a try.

//Double Smart quotes

search "<34>" replace with "“"
search "“ " replace with "” "

I do my lyrics in Pages, which has the setting to automatically use smart quotes, followed by Jucio Brennan's Lyric Hyphenator. Then I use click-assign to enter them in Finale.

I'm sure you can do the same thing with Word.

Yes, I use Brennan's Lyric Hyphenator too! Love it.

I typeset an entire hymnal with that thing. Only thing I didn't agree on was the hyphenation of "every." His hyphenator made it eve-ry, and I prefer ev-ery. I think. I went back and forth for an agonizing week on which one to use.

zuill wrote:Jari had a plugin for this prior to v25. I don't see it yet in a v25 beta form. There's a Finalescript for changing curly quotes back to straight quotes. I am not sure how to write a script to do the reverse, since there's only one straight quote character, but 2 different curly ones. I'm sure there's a way. Someone here must know the steps.

Zuill

P.S.: This Finalescript seems to do it. It works in my simple example. It changes the straight quote to all left sided smart quotes, then it changes the left sided smart quote followed by a space to a right sided quote followed by a space. It may not work for your situation, but it's worth a try.

//Double Smart quotes

search "<34>" replace with "“"
search "“ " replace with "” "

Zulli, what is this Finale Script of which you speak? I've heard of it...

It's a plugin. Just create a new script and copy the text I put at the bottom of my thread. That is one for the double quotes.

Zuill

dankreider wrote:Yes, I use Brennan's Lyric Hyphenator too! Love it.

I typeset an entire hymnal with that thing. Only thing I didn't agree on was the hyphenation of "every." His hyphenator made it eve-ry, and I prefer ev-ery. I think. I went back and forth for an agonizing week on which one to use.

We get around that one in barbershop by using ev-'ry.

Here's the script I use to change a straight apostrophe into a curly one. Are Mac scripts different from windows, as far as identifying specific characters?

search "'" replace with "’"

Here's a script for Finale 2012 and later (due to font changes affecting the curly quotes). It also adds a hard space for any carets (^) entered in the lyrics. There is also a variant for adding elision slurs as described in the User Manual. Sorry the entry is so long.

//FINALE SCRIPT FOLLOWS—DO NOT INCLUDE THIS ALL CAPS LINE
//Finale 2012 (Windows) and later:

//Searches and Replaces the apostrophe with a curly apostrophe and replaces the caret (^) with a hard space.

//Next line searches and replaces the apostrophe
search "'" replace with "’"

//Change straight quotes to double curly quotes -- courtesy of Zuill
//The following changes the straight quote to all left sided smart quotes, then it changes the left sided smart quote followed by a space to a right sided quote followed by a space.
search "<34>" replace with "“"
search "“ " replace with "” "

//The hard space character must be copied in. Ctr+Spacebar does not work in the FinaleScript editor.
Next line puts in a hard space
search "^^" replace with " "



//TO ENTER ELISION SLURS AS DESCRIBED IN THE FINALE USER MANUAL
//MAKE ANOTHER SCRIPT AND SUBSTITUTE THE FOLLOWING FOR THE PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS STARTING "//Hard Space must be..."
//—DO NOT INCLUDE THESE ALL CAPS LINES

//Next line puts in the elision slur in place of a caret (^)
//Note the elision slur font size is set to 12
search "^^" replace with "I" [EngraverFontSet] 12

Graeme,
I'm just beginning to use FinaleScript, and I'm trying to learn the syntax. In your elision script, I don't understand the use of the caret ^. Do you use the ^ between the syllables you want to elide? If so, why the ^^ in the script? Wouldn't there just be one?

In both the elision script and the hard space script, the caret (^) has the sole purpose of being a placeholder for where the elision slur or hard space should be inserted. It is an arbitrary character chosen because it is easy to type and would rarely, if ever, appear naturally in lyrics.

Redundancy here: I've memorized the ASCII codes alt-0146, alt-0147, alt-0148 for smart apostrophe/open quotes/close quotes, and have those programmed into a Genovation keypad (which is now backup, having acquired a Logitech G110 with programmable keys).

If I forget to type the Mac keypresses for curly quotes, I copy the entire Lyrics Window contents into a text editor like TextWrangler That has a command to "Educate Quotes". (See what they did there?)

You can then paste back the complete text into the Lyrics Window.