Software to change American punctuation to British

Question

My apologies if this is off topic.

American and British writing have different punctuation styles. Is there any software that can change American style punctuation to British? I am referring to punctuation, not spelling. A simple example would be changing the American styled

"Hello," he said.

to what (I think is) the British styled

'Hello', he said.

I am not entirely certain about the particulars which is why I need this tool in the first place.

Answer 1

The idea that there are two styles is erroneous, as has been mentioned above. The 'rules' surrounding punctuation are becoming more relaxed year by year and, especially with the growth and use of the Internet, 'US' and 'UK' styles are becoming ever less easy to distinguish.

And since 'quotes are supposed to be exactly like the original', this would include importing a style possibly at variance with that used in the main body of the document.

That having been said, you might find this treatment of punctuation surrounding quotations interesting - even quite useful.

Though choosing to use double or single inverted commas in the first instance is more a matter of personal (maybe your editor's) choice, I tend to use double for direct speech, but single for other quotes, to signal novel/unusual words/usages, or perhaps the risky choice of a certain word ('scare quotes').

Answer 2

Maybe the answer is really quite simple. Any decent word processing program will pick up on all of the incorrect punctuation and spelling if you import an American document into a British system. So if you import an American doc with the sentence:

 "What a lovely color," she said.

into a British system, it should squawk and flag things so you know to fix it up to be:

 'What a lovely colour', she said.

by whatever hideously tedious means you invent.