Backslashes before apostrophes

  • Unknown's avatar
    marydesantis · Member ·

    Hi all–total newbie here. I created my blog yesterday, imported posts from blogger, and today noticed there are backslashes before apostrophes in all my posts. I’ve looked around the internet but not found a definitive answer or much relevant to this that isn’t ten or so years old. Is there a coding fix (and if so, please tell me exactly where I need to post something–I’m blind and having exact text to search for is helpful). I’m using the Ixion theme, if it matters.
    Thanks!

  • supernovia · Staff ·

    Hey there, could you send a link to an affected post or page? I checked through a few and did not see this issue yet, but if we can spot it we might be able to find a way to address it.

  • Unknown's avatar
    marydesantis · Member ·

    As far as I can tell, it’s only happening in blog posts (not on pages). Here’s a link where I’m seeing it.
    https://kitnkabookle.wordpress.com/2021/05/17/excerptgiveaway-fostered-identity-by-maggie-thom/

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    @marydesantis thanks for that! Can you also let us know what your Blogger site URL is so we can take a closer look?

    Thanks!

  • Unknown's avatar
    marydesantis · Member ·

    Sure. I also think I may have figured out that it’s a problem of straight vs. curly quotes. Here’s the link to the post I shared above on my blogger site. It has straight quotes, and the WordPress version has the backslashes.
    https://www.kitnkabookle.com/2021/05/excerpt-fostered-identity-maggie-thom.html

    Here’s a link to a post on my blogger site that has curly quotes. The corresponding post on my WordPress site does not have the backslashes.
    https://www.kitnkabookle.com/2021/05/guestpost-bolder-guilt-edged-janice-tremayne.html

    I copied and pasted much of this content, which explains why it’s only happening sometimes—from sources that had straight quotes. At least, that’s my current working theory. If I’m right, is there an easy way to change straight quotes in content to curly quotes? I’d guess the straight quotes call to something in the site sourcecode.

  • Unknown's avatar
    helper-heroponriki · Member ·

    Sure. I also think I may have figured out that it’s a problem of straight vs. curly quotes. Here’s the link to the post I shared above on my blogger site. It has straight quotes, and the WordPress version has the backslashes.

    Yep! That’s why I needed to verify the source – if there’s curly quotes rather than straight and you’re using copy and paste they won’t copy over correctly.

    The quickest way to fix this is to take a post that’s impacted, copy and paste the post into a text editor, and use its “find and replace” feature to replace any ’ with ' and ” with " (make sure they’re straight quotes) then copy and paste the “fixed” version into the post editor.

    If you upgraded to a Business plan, you could install a search and replace plugin – like Better Search Replace – to fix this in bulk. You can review what that plan provides here:

    https://wordpress.com/pricing/

    Let us know if you still have trouble!

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