pasting quote marks adds “ and ”

[lglen2]

“ and ” are the HTML codes for the left and right quote marks, respectively (" and ").

When I copy from a plain text editor into Canvas' HTML editor (in an assignment page), initially, all seems well. But once I click to view the result in the WYSIWYG editor, I get a Canvas "error" page ("There's nothing here").

When I go back into HTML view, I notice the left/right quote codes have been added inside the " and " characters. In other words, it's not even replacing the characters; it's trying to duplicate them. Neither is good, because I get this error screen.

I used to be a web developer. I know from HTML. It's not that I'm typing something weird or that I don't know what I'm looking at when I use the HTML editor. Why is Canvas doing this, and more importantly, how do I make it stop? I need to paste a code snippet into something like 80 pages (over two courses), and possibly more in the future. I cannot stand the thought of having to go back and select and delete the “ and ” strings (twice each per page, by the way) every single time. Someone please save me!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi there, @lglen2 ...

I was trying to follow your steps, but I couldn't duplicate exactly what you were seeing.  So, I wonder if you might be able to share a short screen recording of what you are seeing on your end?

The only other thing I can think of...which I don't even know if it is related...is that when I paste in “ and ” to the HTML side of the RCE (Rich Content Editor) and then switch back to the WYSIWYG side of the RCE, I notice that the quotation marks are curly in form compared to straight up and down.  I've increased the font size just to show you an example.  The top quotes are your HTML code, and the bottom ones are by typing the quotes on your keyboard in the WYSIWYG editor.

The HTML code (without the increase in font size) looks something like this:

<p>&ldquo; &rdquo;</p>
<p>" "</p>

Again, I really don't know if this helps to answer your question, but just thought I'd reply with this observation.  If you can share a short video of what you are seeing, I think that would be helpful.

Thanks!

[chriscas]

Hi @lglen2,

Just to have a second opinion here, I also tried to replicate your issue but everything on my end worked as expected (no extra characters or any of the weirdness you're getting).  Maybe there is something else in the content that you're pasting that's affecting the quotes in a weird way, of maybe your Canvas instance has some kind of extra customization that's changing html.  As @Chris_Hofer said, a short screen recording or maybe attachment of the html code you're copy/pasting might help us replicate the issue.

Look forward to hearing back from you!

-Chris