If you’re like most people, you probably use Windows Live Writer to write articles, blog posts, and other content. But what if you want to make your content curly? You can! Here’s how:

  1. Open Windows Live Writer and click on the “Create new document” button.
  2. Type in a few curly quotes into the “Document Name” field and click on the “Create” button.
  3. When the document is created, it will be filled with curly quotes. You can change this by editing the “Document Properties” field in the “New Document” dialog box. For more information, see this article on how to make curly quotes in Windows Live Writer: How to Make Curly Quotes in Windows Live Writer

Tired of Windows Live Writer switching all your double and single quotes to the curly versions? Sure, you can turn it off in the options panel, but there’s actually a cool trick to use them that you might not have noticed.

Of course, this is only really useful when you’re writing articles with command line tips since the curly quotes break copy and paste, so for the 5 people out there that might read this article, be glad that I was bored and felt like writing this up.

Use the Hidden Keyboard Trick to Make Non-Curly Quotes

Here’s the basic idea: Whenever you type the ” or ‘ keys, Windows Live Writer replaces them with the curly version—but if you hit the backspace key, it will revert it back to the regular version.

For instance, here’s how it works. You’ll probably notice that a video would have illustrated this point better, but I’m lazy and there’s only 5 of you reading this article anyway.

The same thing works for single quotes as well, and a few other characters that you might type.

If you’d prefer, you can always head into the options panel and just turn the smart quotes option off, of course.

Well there you are. I expect all 5 of you to leave a comment telling me that you already knew about this feature and  you’re very disappointed in me for wasting my time writing it up. Go on, I’m waiting…