Update: Sadly, this solution is not consistent. It works more often than otherwise, but we still need an OS based solution.
I often find myself copying/pasting from PDFs into Word, Notes, OneNote, etc. Unfortunately, every line of the PDF is treated as a single line with a line break after it. The result is a LOT of time spent going back and deleting the line break (carriage return) in order to make the text wrap properly. Using a “paste as plain text” can sometimes work, but is not always an option and doesn’t always work.
Today I found a solution and it was not what I expected.
For some reason Apple’s “Smart Punctation” setting, which automatically converts two dashed (–) into an em-dash (–) or plain quotes into smart quotes, also carries over those pesky line breaks. Going into the settings and turning this off solves the problem!
I don’t see why these things are connected, the line breaks and, e.g., smart quotes (which I happen to like), but for now this is the trade off I am willing to make.
Apparently the solution is the same across all Apple operating systems.
