C# How to replace Microsoft's Smart Quotes with straight quotation marks?

Question

My post below asked what the curly quotation marks were and why my app wouldn\'t work with them, my question now is how can I replace them when my program comes across them,

Answer 1

it worked for me, you can try below code

string replacedstring = ("your string with smart quotes").Replace('\u201d', '\'');

Thanks!

Answer 2

A more extensive listing of problematic word characters

if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2013') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2013', '-');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2014') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2014', '-');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2015') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2015', '-');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2017') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2017', '_');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2018') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2018', '\'');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2019') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2019', '\'');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201a') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201a', ',');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201b') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201b', '\'');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201c') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201c', '\"');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201d') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201d', '\"');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201e') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201e', '\"');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2026') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace("\u2026", "...");
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2032') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2032', '\'');
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2033') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2033', '\"');

Answer 3

To extend on Nick van Esch's popular answer, here is the code with the names of the characters in the comments.

if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2013') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2013', '-'); // en dash
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2014') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2014', '-'); // em dash
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2015') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2015', '-'); // horizontal bar
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2017') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2017', '_'); // double low line
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2018') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2018', '\''); // left single quotation mark
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2019') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2019', '\''); // right single quotation mark
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201a') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201a', ','); // single low-9 quotation mark
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201b') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201b', '\''); // single high-reversed-9 quotation mark
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201c') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201c', '\"'); // left double quotation mark
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201d') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201d', '\"'); // right double quotation mark
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u201e') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u201e', '\"'); // double low-9 quotation mark
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2026') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace("\u2026", "..."); // horizontal ellipsis
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2032') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2032', '\''); // prime
if (buffer.IndexOf('\u2033') > -1) buffer = buffer.Replace('\u2033', '\"'); // double prime

Answer 4

According to the Character Map application that comes with Windows, the Unicode values for the curly quotes are 0x201c and 0x201d. Replace those values with the straight quote 0x0022, and you should be good to go.

String.Replace(0x201c, '"');
String.Replace(0x201d, '"');

Answer 5

The VB equivalent of what @Matthew wrote:

Public Module StringExtensions

    <Extension()>
    Public Function StripIncompatableQuotes(BadString As String) As String
        If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(BadString) Then
            Return BadString.Replace(ChrW(&H2018), "'").Replace(ChrW(&H2019), "'").Replace(ChrW(&H201C), """").Replace(ChrW(&H201D), """")
        Else
            Return BadString
        End If
    End Function
End Module

Answer 6

I also have a program which does this, the source is in this file of CP-1252 Fixer. It additionally defines some mappings for converting characters within RTF strings whilst preserving all formatting, which may be useful to some.

It is also a complete mapping of all "smart quote" characters to their low-ascii counterparts, entity codes and character references.