Checking for Matching Quotation Marks

Whether you are writing a term paper, research paper, or post-graduate thesis, one of the most common errors is “mismatched” quotation marks. That is, an opening (beginning) quotation mark (“) will not have a closing (ending) quotation mark (”), or vice versa. It is a hard error to spot while proofreading, and your computer’s spellchecker will not find this type of error. There is a very simple way to verify that a document has “matching” quotation marks.

After you have completed your document, position the cursor at the very beginning of the text (that is, move the cursor in front of the first word on the first page and click to “position” it).

1. Open Find/Replace (or Search/Replace, whatever is applicable to your Word software).

2. In the “Find” field, key in a double quote mark (shift key and the “/’ key). Note: In the Find field, the quotation mark will be a straight quote mark; it will not be cursive.

3. In the “Replace” field, key in the same thing (so that both fields show “).

4. Hit “Replace All” (or whatever selection you have for making a global correction to a document). You should then see the number of replacements that were made.

5. If an odd number shows up after all the replacements are made, then somewhere in the transcript there is an “unmatched” quotation mark. That is, if Find/Replace makes 23 replacements, then somewhere in the document, there is an opening quote mark that does not have a closing quote mark, or vice versa.

If you do get an odd number of replacements, then run the Find/Replace again, only this time hit “Find Next” instead of “Replace All.” The cursor will stop on quote mark. As the computer highlights each quotation mark, verify that it is matched, i.e., that every opening quotation mark has a corresponding closing quotation mark (and vice versa). The computer should stop on an opening quote mark and then a closing quote mark, in that order.

Eventually, as you review the document one quote mark at a time, you will come across either an opening quote mark for which there is no closing quote mark (that is, the computer will find an opening quote mark, and then the very next one that it finds will also be an opening quote mark), or vice versa.

Once you have inserted the missing quote mark, you should do the “Find/Replace” steps again, to verify that the computer now shows an even number of replacements.

Please note that this is not a fail-safe procedure because it is possible that you have two unmatched pairs of quote marks, but it is a tool that you can use to help prevent an easy mistake.