Entourage bug?

J

JIm

How can I fix a problem in Entourage (V.X in Mac OS X.2.8) in which
punctuation marks (apostrophes, quotes, etc.) don't behave properly.
When I type the email, the punctuation marks look fine. I assume they
look OK when they arrive somewhere else. But when the persons respond
with my original included, the punctuation marks are changed. The
apostrophe, for example, drops to the bottom of the line and looks
like a comma.

This was typed correctly "don't" but when it came back it looked like
"don‚t." The quote marks around the two words are likely to be
different in the next permutation.

Thanks for any help.
 
W

Walt Basil

It looks good on this end so far...

How can I fix a problem in Entourage (V.X in Mac OS X.2.8) in which
punctuation marks (apostrophes, quotes, etc.) don't behave properly.
When I type the email, the punctuation marks look fine. I assume they
look OK when they arrive somewhere else. But when the persons respond
with my original included, the punctuation marks are changed. The
apostrophe, for example, drops to the bottom of the line and looks
like a comma.

This was typed correctly "don't" but when it came back it looked like
"don‚t." The quote marks around the two words are likely to be
different in the next permutation.

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

Walt
--
Email me at wbasil at elp dot rr dot com

Current setup:
Palm m515,
Apple iBook 700 Combo
640 Megs RAM, Mac OS X 10.2.6
MS Office:mac v.X SR1
 
M

Mickey Stevens

First of all, don't use smart quotes. Go to Tools -> AutoCorrect, click the
"AutoFormat" tab, and under "Replace as you type, uncheck "Straight quotes
with smart quotes".

If you still see the problem when people reply to your messages, simply go
to Format -> Character Set -> Western European (Windows) when you have the
message open. You can automate this task using a rule using the
instructions on the Entourage Help Page:
< http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/faqs.html#Anchor-175>
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

BTW, there is no bug in Entourage. The bug is in Windows email clients which
read your curly quotes OK and then pretend, incorrectly, that your quoted
curly quotes are 7-bit ASCII when they send out the reply. Curly quotes are
no such thing - they are 8-bit and thus should be encoded in a format
(called ISO 8859-1) which will be decoded correctly on both Mac and Windows,
just like Entourage did when it sent out you original message. Instead, by
sending it out as US-ASCII, it ensures that these 8-bit characters will get
sent with Windows encoding and thus will look wrong on the Mac when it
decodes as so-called US-ASCII (it doesn't translate the 8-bit characters
into MacLatin encoding).

So, as Mickey says, the solution is to view them with Western European
(Windows) Character Set. And to turn off "Smart Quotes" for HTML. Then
there's no chance of the error. But the error is entirely on the part of the
Windows mailer which falsely thinks the curly quotes don't need special
encoding.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - 2001 or X.
It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.
 
J

JIm

Thanks -- knowing the underlying dynamics (7bit vs. 8bit, etc) helps.
While the specific response (resetting character set) takes care of
the problem, I always appreciate knowing what is behind the situation
and the reason for the specific recommended action.
 
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