I have an funny, yet annoying, issue that I only recently discovered as I started writing in Dutch. (As such I can not trace when the issue started)
My Texworks (ubuntu Gnome 14.04 ) interprets \"{} as \'{'}. I therefore loose access to an important accent. The syntax coloring confirms this: in \" only the back-slash and the first single quote turns blue, the second remains black. I exclusively compile with pdfLaTeX, so I dont know if the problem would exist with other compilers in texworks.
If I compile my code with texmaker (which I usually not use), I do not have this issue, so I am pretty sure it is related to texworks alone, it also happens in all my documents, so I am pretty sure its not a package. That leaves a setting somewhere, but I do not have a clue which one that could be.
Any idea how to fix this? At this point an alternative method to compile an umlaut/trema, if it even exists, would also be acceptable (though of course not preferred).
Best Answer
After @UlrikeFischers comment. The solution for me was that I had to change the (default?) smart quote setting to `none' in both the preferences menu for Texworks in general and in the the format menu for existing documents.