Comments on: How to turn off WordPress smart quotes

By: How to paste HTML code into a Wordpress blog post : WebPublishing.me

How to paste HTML code into a Wordpress blog post : WebPublishing.me — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 05:31:14 +0000

[...] to appear anywhere on your blog, you can try modding your functions.php file following these instructions from Lance Bledsoe. Note: I haven’t actually tried his suggestion, so proceed at your own risk. I’m [...]

By: bledsoe

bledsoe — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 21:31:53 +0000

You got me, Bruce, I don't know much about wordpress.com blogs. I do know they have extensive support thru their forums, though, so that's probably a good place to look.

Good luck,

By: Bruce Peterson

Bruce Peterson — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 17:16:14 +0000

Actually it is not self-hosted - it's through WordPress.com. And in looking more closely, the problem only seems to occur in captions of pictures - not in the normal body of the text. When I put a single quote (') in the caption of a picture it comes out as this:
emperors. Following the links you gave me I tried to replace the ' with ' and ended up with the same character. So perhaps my problem is slightly different than other peoples'. Maybe I just have to rewrite the caption to avoid possessives?

By: bledsoe

bledsoe — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 12:07:22 +0000

Hi Bruce,

I'm assuming that your blog is a self-hosted (i.e., wordpress.org) blog and not a wordpress.com blog. (If you have a blog on wordpress.com you might want to check out http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/curly-quotes from the wordpress.com forums.)

If you do have a self-hosted wordpress blog, then yes, the functions.php file and the wp-includes file both live on the server that's hosting your blog, though you can't access them directly from your Dashboard. You have to use an FTP client (e.g., Filezilla) or some sort of application from your host's cpanel screen like FileManager. Both of these allow you to look around your site's directory structure and also upload files from your local machine to your server.

Note that there's also the "Editor" feature in your Dashboard, which does allow you to edit certain of your wordpress files (though it won't actually show you the directory structure). Inside the Dashboard, on the left sidebar, click on Appearance, then Editor. You'll be presented with a screen which allows you to edit some of your wordpress files, including functions.php. (Technically, it's allowing you to edit files within each of your wordpress "themes".)

FWIW, I'm not a huge fan of the Dashboard Editor. If I'm going to be editing or uploading files to my server I prefer to use FTP along with my favorite text editor, but I suppose its nice to have options.

Let me know if this helps.

By: Bruce Peterson

Bruce Peterson — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 03:52:32 +0000

I suspect I will feel more of an idiot after this is answered than I do now, but here goes anyway. I'm new to WordPress and am being annoyed by the quote handling so I Googled and found this (and a number of other sites all giving similar solutions). The problem is I can't figure out where the functions.php file (or the wp-includes folder) might reside. The Finder can't find it locally on my Mac. So I figured that rather than being local to my computer it must be somewhere on a WordPress server somewhere so I went into the Dashboard and started looking around and got no further. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

By: Replacing Smart Quotes with Dumb Quotes in Microsoft Word | Must Be Built

Replacing Smart Quotes with Dumb Quotes in Microsoft Word | Must Be Built — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:24:13 +0000

[...] you noticed that WordPress is putting smart quotes around all my quoted text. Grrrrrr. Here is how to get rid of the WordPress ones if they still grate. This entry was posted in Tech Musings. Bookmark the permalink. ← iPad 2 Revealed – [...]

By: SQLDBPros.com

SQLDBPros.com — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 19:40:46 +0000

Perfect! Easy and worked like a charm. (and now my readers can cut and paste from my site directly to SQL Server Management Studio).

By: Around the WordPress Community: W3 Total Cache, PHP 4 or 5, KSES.php, CRON, and More Links | WordCast - WordPress podcast, Blogging podcast, Blogging news, WordPress plugins, WordPress themes, WordPress news

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:05:54 +0000

[...] sharing. Otto shares the code to bring this little link shortner to your own WordPress blog posts.How to turn off WordPress smart quotes – Lance Bledsoe – While people like Matt Mullenweg thrive on the word processor style curly quotes, a lot of [...]

By: bledsoe

bledsoe — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:21:18 +0000

Feel free to copy the post if you like, though a link and a shout out is always appreciated.

By: Wordpress Tricks

Wordpress Tricks — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:59:29 +0000

Hi, i;m have same interesting with you and i found your website from google. You give nice info for wordpress plugin and it's really informatif. Can i copy your post into my blog ?
WordPress Tricks´s last [type] ..Post Teaser v401 WP Plugin