Using Automatic Text Substitutions On a Mac

Automatic text substitutions let you type curly quotes and em dashes without worrying about remember the correct keyboard sequence to use. There are also a variety of other options for URLs, addresses, copy and paste and other things to help you be more productive and consistent when typing.
Video Transcript: Hi! This is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to use text substitutions in a variety of apps on you Mac. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 900 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreaon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
So when you're typing text on your Mac, whether it's in an app like TextEdit or Pages or maybe composing a new Mail message, sometimes what you type will be immediately replaced with something else. This is called a Text Substitution and there are several different types. Let's start with a basic app like Text Edit. You'll find similar options in lots of other apps. If you go to Edit and then Substitutions you'll see some of the options here. Let's start with Smart Quotes. You can see I have it turned on here. Now if I were to type something with quotes around it notice how the quotes started off with straight quotes. Then they curved depending upon whether there was a letter immediately to the left or the right of the quote. If I were to have this off then this is what I would get. So these two characters are different than this character here. As a matter of fact with this turned off I can create curly quotes by using the Option key. Option and then the left square bracket on the keyboard will give you this curly quote and Shift Option and the same key will give you the right one. Whereas just using the Quote key, Shift and then Quote, will give you the straight up and down quotes. So with this turned off you still have the ability to do what you want. But with it turned On then  you're going to get these curly quotes automatically as you type. 
The is the standard way most people type on their computers. But if you're a coder, like me, often you want straight quotes because that's what computer programs use. They don't usually understand these curly quotes and they get in the way a lot if you have this Smart Substitution turned on.
This also works for single quotes which are also the same character used for apostrophes. So if I were to use a single quote here you could see that changes to a curly single quote. If I were to use an apostrophe you could see that also changes to basically the same character as the right curly single quote. But if I had this off then it stays as a straight up and down single quote or a straight up and down apostrophe. 
Another option here is Smart Dashes. With Smart Dashes turned on if you use two dashes, like that, you could see it's immediately replaced with what is called an EM Dash, spelled EM. This is just a long dash. It's what should be used when you're doing normal writing and you want to create a pause in a sentence. A single dash, known as a hyphen, isn't technically the correct character to use. Again this can get in the way of coders, for instance, if I have a variable here and I do dash dash that means I want to subtract one from it. But replacing it with an EM dash isn't right. 
The next one is Smart Links. So this makes it so when you type a URL, like this, it will immediately convert it to a Link. So you can see this is a link now and it's clickable. I could still select this link here, Control click it, right click on a mouse or a two-finger click on a trackpad, and I can remove the link. But if I don't want it to be a Link, just automatically like that, then I can turn this Off. 
Next we have Data Detectors. So with Data Detectors, if you type something like an address, it will immediately recognize it. If you move your cursor over it you could see the highlights, like that. It provides you with this little menu here where it could locate on a map, Add to Contacts. This really doesn't get in the way of editing like the Links do. I could still click in here and easily change things. So that could be useful. But if you don't like it you could just turn it Off. 
Then we have Text Replacement. So Text Replacement refers to the feature in System Preferences. If you go into Keyboard, and then Text, you can replace various things here with other things on the right. You can create these text replacements. They are really handy and useful and I've done tutorials on them before. But for them to work in TextEdit documents you would need to have Text Replacement turned enabled here. 
Now let's go back up to the Smart Copy & Paste here. So normally if you would Paste something in, it would paste it in exactly where you want it. But let's say we have a sentence like this and we want to Copy a word like this and paste it right here. You could expect, if I pasted it here, paste the four characters, test, right before the word another with no space in-between it. But in fact if I do Command V to Paste, notice how it inserts an extra space there. That's what that does. By having Smart Copy & Paste on it's going to put extra spaces around what you paste in which is usually what you want. It can save you a lot of time. But if you find that you're running into trouble with this maybe you're already inserting an extra space in ahead of time. That's what you're used to. You can turn this Off. 
Now in TextEdit you've got a couple of other features I want to point out. If you go to Show Substitutions you have controls that give you some of the same things you saw in the menu there. You can turn On and Off Smart Dashes, Links, Text Replacements, and Smart Quotes. But you have an extra feature here in Smart Quotes where you can choose the type of Smart Quotes. Here you've got the double quotes and you can see different versions of those. Here you've got single quotes as well. You also have the ability to replace All. So, for instance, if I turn on Smart Quotes and set it to another type of quote and I do Replace All notice how it replaces those quotes, the straight ones, with that there. So if you want to retroactively use these you can do it with the special control here and the Replace All button. Or simply select some text and you use Replace & Selection to only replace the things inside of that selection. 
Another thing you should know about TextEdit is this is on a per document basis. So if I create a new document here and I look under Substitutions you could see what's turned on there. Smart Links and Data Detectors are Off. If I go back here I can go to Substitutions and you could see I have different options there. How does it know what to use at the beginning? Well, if you go to TextEdit Preferences and then New Document here you could see at the bottom it has a lot of these right here. You can set the defaults for each document. So this is customizable on a per document level with defaults available in Preferences. 
Now let's take a look in Mail. In Mail when you're composing a message it's kind of like a little document. You have the same options here. Under Edit, Substitutions you've got the same exact items you have in TextEdit and Show Substitutions with the same things here. So you can use the same options here in each individual Mail message. But a difference here is it's going remember from message to message. So here in this message you've can see, with my cursor in the body of the message, it's not up here in one of these, if I go to Edit, Substitutions, everything is checked. But let's uncheck something. Let's not have Smart Copy & Paste. Now if I were to go to a new message notice here I'm in the To: field. Let's move into the Body field. Then go to Edit, Substitutions and you could see that it remembers. So here what you set in the Menu is going to be your preference for a new message. But note it won't change it for existing messages. So if I go and I turn it on here in this message and I'm still working in this window here it's going to leave it off here.
Now different apps can handle this differently. Kind of the TextEdit Mail way of doing things is the default. But here in Pages, if I go to Edit, Substitutions you could see while it's similar it's a little different. Here I have Smart Web and Emails Links as one option and Smart Phone Number Links as another. So if I type a phone number that's a Smart Link that could launch a FaceTime call. But it has Smart Quotes and Smart Dashes and if I use Show Substitutions here I get basically the same stuff here including Replace All and Replace in Selection option and all the different Smart Quote options. Notice here for Text Replacement it's says it's going to use what's in System Preferences. There's actually a link here. If I click this button it goes right into System Preferences for Text Replacements. But Pages has its own Text Replacements as well. So if I go to Pages, Preferences here and then to Auto Correction there's a set of replacements here. I can turn this On and these would just be for Pages. It wouldn't be for any other app. There are also Pages specific things for using Smart Quotes and Dashes with this list here and a few other things here. Like, for instance, you could automatically detect Lists. So if I were to go and do Option and 8 here to create a Bullet and then do 1 and then hit Return, it automatically detects that I'm creating a list, converts it to a list. Now I can keep typing here and just hit Return a second time to get out of List Mode. So this is a true list here. This is no longer a bullet character. It's converted it because I had that Option turned on. 
Here's one for Numerical Suffixes and Formatting Fractions. Let's turn those both On and see what we get. So for that first one if I type something like first, 1st, you see as soon as I hit the Spacebar it makes the st superscript. For the second one if I type something that's a basic fraction, only works for small fractions like three slash four you can see it changes it to ¾ . 
So the purpose of this video is really two-fold. One is to show you these things so you can use them and be more productive and type a little bit faster and have your work turnout a little neater and more consistent. But the other is also how to turn them Off when they get in the way. For instance if things like replacing two hyphens with a EM dash is a problem when you're a programmer and the same thing with converting Smart Quotes to Curly  Quotes. You definitely don't want to post a coding example that is curly quotes and then have somebody copy and paste it. It's not going to work until they convert the quotes to straight quotes. So you want to look out for these things and keep them in mind and use them when they are appropriate and in other places turn them off.
Comments: One Response to “Using Automatic Text Substitutions On a Mac”

Michael Goettee
2 years ago
My first lesson for curly quotes (aka smart quotes) vs straight quotes was what I learned from pro typesetters in my earliest days in desktop publishing. Curly was always used for true quotation marks and apostrophes. Straight marks were used as symbols for inches (") or feet ('). Straight marks were also used as symbols minutes (') and seconds ("). Editors would always correct us newbie computer graphic designers who didn't know better.
Comments Closed.
Using Automatic Text Substitutions On a Mac

Comments: One Response to “Using Automatic Text Substitutions On a Mac”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information
