Quark Forums

Hi everyone

I'm very new to Quark and hope I haven't missed this on a previous forum topic.

I've copied & pasted a Word document into Quark with no problems, but now need to extend the work and it's not capitalising the first letter of a sentence/paragraph.

At the start of a sentence or paragraph, should Quark Express 7 automatically make the first letter of the word a capital letter?

If yes, can someone enlighten me as to what I should do.

Regards

Jane

 Jane. No version of XPress will do that. There may be an XTension, but I'm not aware of one. XPress is a whole different animal than word processing programs. It has some features of word processors (like Word), but the designers assume that the user wants to control how the text lays out.

Now, if you were meaning a drop cap (those big capital letters that extend down two or three lines at the start of a paragraph) then XPress can do that. You just select all the copy you want to have drop caps, go to Formats and click on the Drop Cap check box. Specify the number of lines you want it to cover and there you go. 

 I just opened Word and it does indeed do that - how annoying! Having learned to type on a manual typewriter in the Middle Ages, I have always been happy using the shift key and it seems odd that anyone would be happy to rely on this. Suppose you don't want an upper case letter? I hate the way Microsoft programmes all assume they know what you want.

No, Quark will give you a cap if you type a cap, and lower case if that's what you type. Thank goodness!

Emma, I think all that is customizable in the Preferences.

Jane, if you work on a Mac, an AppleScript could do the job. You'd have to be sure every paragraph starts with a letter and not a bullet or a tab. And also tell if you'd like every paragraph of the current story to be processed or every paragraph throughout the document... That kind of things.

I could try writing the script if you precise those things.

Graeme

Hi Graeme!

I wasn't aware of that feature. So I took a look at it, but I must say I'm not convinced. Is your spellchecker really offers the possibility of capitalizing each first word of the paragraphs?