Curse of the Curly Quotes

William Fields

I’m on NP++ v8.9.3.

When pasting code into NP++ from another source, no matter what I do, if the source has curly quotes, the pasted content has curly quotes.

What I’ve tried:

GDI (most compatible)
Cascadia Mono - as default font.

Unless there’s no other way to configure NP++ to “change all curly quotes to straight quotes when opening documents or pasting content”, I’ll of course set up a macro, but the other options mentioned in the manual aren’t working as advertised.

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/102348

Am I missing something?

Notepad++ v8.9.3 (32-bit)
Build time: Mar 20 2026 - 00:43:07
Scintilla/Lexilla included: 5.6.0/5.4.7
Boost Regex included: 1_90
pugixml included: 1.15
nlohmann JSON included: 3.12.0
Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Command Line:
Admin mode: OFF
Local Conf mode: OFF
Cloud Config: OFF
WinGUp: present
disableNppAutoUpdate.xml: absent
Periodic Backup: OFF
Placeholders: ON
Scintilla Rendering Mode: SC_TECHNOLOGY_DEFAULT (0)
Multi-instance Mode: monoInst
asNotepad: OFF
File Status Auto-Detection: cdEnabledNew (for current file/tab only)
Dark Mode: ON
Display Info:
primary monitor: 2560x1600, scaling 125%
visible monitors count: 2
installed Display Class adapters:
0001: Description - Intel® Iris® Plus Graphics
0001: DriverVersion - 26.20.100.7641
0002: Description - Microsoft Remote Display Adapter
0002: DriverVersion - 10.0.22621.5415
OS Name: Windows 11 Enterprise (64-bit)
OS Version: 23H2
OS Build: 22631.6783
Current ANSI codepage: 1252
Plugins:
ComparePlugin (2.0.2)
DSpellCheck (1.5)
ElasticTabstops (1.5)
LocationNavigate (0.4.8.1)
mimeTools (3.1)
NppConverter (4.7)
NppExec (0.8.10)
NppExport (0.4)
NppTextFX (1.4.1)
PythonScript (2.1)
Tidy2 (0.2)
_CustomizeToolbar (5.3)

PeterJones

@William-Fields said in Curse of the Curly Quotes:

When pasting code into NP++ from another source, no matter what I do, if the source has curly quotes, the pasted content has curly quotes.

Right. That’s because the curly quote characters have different codepoints from ASCII quotemarks.

It’s doing the right thing.

If you want to convert, then use a regular expression:
FIND = [“”]
REPLACE = "
SEARCH MODE = Regular Expression
REPLACE ALL

change all curly quotes to straight quotes when opening documents or pasting content

There’s no such command or option in Notepad++, because that would be Notepad++ changing characters from one codepoint to another without user interaction, which is the antithesis of text editing

https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/102348

The Direct Write ligature-effects from the post you showed is just the fonts changing the appearance of characters based on font ligature rules, but the underlying characters that Notepad++ is presenting are the exact same characters as found on disk. On the other hand, the curly quotes that you are copying and pasting are different characters from the ASCII quote.