Formatting Issues

How to Fix Apostrophes Changing to Double Quotes in Word

Maira Mehtab Sep 20, 2026 873 views

Question details

The user needs to convert single quotes to double quotes throughout a document using wildcards, but wants to prevent trailing apostrophes from incorrectly converting into double quotes.

Product: Microsoft Word
Device & OS: not provided
Scenario: Using the Find and Replace feature with wildcards to swap single quotation marks for double quotation marks.
Observed behavior: Apostrophes preceding an 's' (e.g., "Joe's") remain correct, but trailing apostrophes after words ending in 's' (e.g., "Simons'") are incorrectly changed to double quotes (e.g., "Simons"").

Before you start

Before beginning the replacement process, temporarily disable the 'Straight quotes with smart quotes' AutoFormat feature in Word's settings to prevent the system from automatically overriding your manual corrections.

Solution 1Recommended

Use Find and Replace Followed by Manual Proofreading

Since Word's built-in wildcards and VBA cannot perfectly distinguish between a closing single quote and a trailing apostrophe, executing a mass replacement followed by targeted manual correction is the most reliable method.

Even advanced wildcard searches and VBA scripts struggle to determine the contextual difference between an apostrophe indicating possession at the end of a word and a single closing quotation mark. The most time-efficient method is to accept some errors during the bulk replacement and manually clean up the edge cases.

Open Find and Replace

Press Ctrl + H on your keyboard to open the Find and Replace dialog box in Word.

Execute the Bulk Replacement

Enter your wildcard parameters to replace single quotes with double quotes and click 'Replace All'.

Search for Errors

Use the Navigation pane (Ctrl + F) to search specifically for words ending in 's' followed by a double quote by typing s" into the search bar.

Manually Correct the Apostrophes

Navigate through the highlighted search results and manually change the incorrect double quotes back to trailing apostrophes (e.g., changing Simons" to Simons').

Solution 2

Disable Smart Quotes to Prevent Unwanted Conversions

If you are fixing the quotes manually and Word keeps reverting them to the wrong directional style, disabling Smart Quotes will give you full manual control over your punctuation.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Word change my trailing apostrophes to double quotes during Find and Replace?

When using wildcards to convert single quotes to double quotes, Word's engine often cannot distinguish between a closing single quotation mark and a trailing apostrophe used for possession (like in "Simons'"). It treats them as the same character.

Can a VBA macro automatically differentiate between apostrophes and single quotes?

No, even with VBA, programmatic solutions struggle to interpret context perfectly in this specific scenario. You will still need to run a standard replacement and perform manual copy-editing for words ending in 's'.

How do I easily find the incorrect quotes after replacing them all?

After running 'Replace All', use the Find feature (Ctrl + F) to search for s" (the letter 's' followed by a double quote). This will quickly locate the trailing apostrophes that were incorrectly converted to double quotes.

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