Straight Quotes

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by Ilene Strizver

One of the most irritating typographic faux pas is the use of straight quotation marks (also called “dumb” quotes) instead of true typographic quotation marks (“smart” or “curly” quotes). How did this dumb-versus-smart muddle begin? Blame the engineers: the standard keyboard layout (which was not created by typographers!) has straight quotes in place of real quotes. As designers, it’s our job to use our “smarts” to work around this all-too-common problem.

Get smart!

What’s the difference between smart and dumb? Smart quotes are usually curved in shape and have different opening and closing versions for use at the beginning and end of quoted material, respectively. Dumb (or straight) quotes are usually simple tapered vertical or angled marks. These are also referred to as “primes,” and should be used in numerical measurements to indicate inches (a double prime) and feet (a single prime).

The easiest way to handle quotation marks is to go to the preferences menu of your word processing or design application and turn on the “smart quotes” feature. This will automatically to the en­closed el­e­ments. So <q>Hello</q> ren­ders as Hello. Two caveats. First, a par­ent el­e­ment (like html) must have a substitute the correct smart quotes in newly typed-in text, but it’s not foolproof. If you import text or copy-and-paste from another application, you may have to replace the dumb quotes manually. Another problem with using the “smart quotes” setting is that when you do need inch and foot marks, your application will turn them into curly quotes! These also must

be fixed manually.Using the “search-and-replace” feature of your software is another option, but a problematic one. It requires you to replace one character (the dumb quote) with either one of two different characters (smart open quote or smart close quote), depending on its

context.You can also replace all the quotation marks manually, of course, but no matter which method you use there’s no substitute for careful proofreading. Be sure to check that you didn’t miss any straight quotes and that the open and closed versions

Apostrophes

are used correctly.Last but not least, don’t forget the apostrophes! Typographically speaking, an apostrophe is a closed single smart quote. Make sure to replace straight apostrophes

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with their smarter, curly cousins.straight and curly quotesAlways use curly 

quotesStraight quotes are the two generic ver­ti­cal quo­ta­tion marks lo­cated near the re­turn key: the straight sin­gle quote (') and the straight

dou­ble quote (").Curly quotes are the quo­ta­tion marks used in good ty­pog­ra­phy. There are four

curly quote char­ac­ters: the open­ing sin­gle quote (‘), the clos­ing sin­gle quote (’), the open­ing dou­ble quote (“), and the clos­ing dou­ble quote (”).

Windows

Mac OS

HTML

'

straight single quote

'

'

'

"

straight double quote

"

"

"

‘

opening single quote

alt 0145

option + ]

&lsquo;

’

closing single quote

alt 0146

option + shift + ]

&rsquo;

“

opening double quote

alt 0147

option + [

&ldquo;

”

closing double quote

alt 0148

option + shift + [

&rdquo;Straight quotes are a type­writer habit. In tra­di­tional print­ing, all quo­ta­tion marks were curly. But type­writer char­ac­ter sets were lim­ited by me­chan­i­cal con­straints and phys­i­cal space. By re­plac­ing the curly open­ing and clos­ing quotes with am­bidex­trous straight quotes, two slots be­came avail­able for other

characters.Word proces­sors are not lim­ited in this way. You can al­ways get curly quotes. Com­pared to straight quotes, curly quotes are more leg­i­ble on the page and match the other char­ac­ters bet­ter. There­fore, straight quotes should never, ever ap­pear in your

documents.

"That's a 'magic' shoe."

wrong

“That’s a ‘magic’ shoe.”

rightFor­tu­nately, avoid­ing straight quotes is easy: use your word proces­sor’s smart-quote fea­ture, which will sub­sti­tute curly quotes au­to­mat­i­cally. Smart quotes are typ­i­cally turned on

by default.How to turn smart quotes on

or offWordFile → Options → Proofing → AutoCorrect Options → AutoFormat As You Type → check or uncheck

"Straight Quotes" with “Smart Quotes”Mac OS WordWord → Preferences → AutoCorrect → AutoFormat As You Type → check or uncheck

"Straight Quotation Marks" with “Smart Quotation Marks”Word­Per­fectTools → QuickCorrect → SmartQuotes → check or uncheck Use double quotation marks as you type and Use single quotation marks

as you typeSmart-quote sub­sti­tu­tion has been built into word proces­sors for 20 years. That’s why straight quotes are one of the most

griev­ous and in­ept ty­po­graphic errors.So why do I keep see­ing straight quotes

in le­gal documents?How to convert all quotes to

curly quotes• Use the search-and-re­place func­tion to search for all in­stances of the straight sin­gle quote (') and re­place it with

the same char­ac­ter—a straight sin­gle quote (').• Use the search-and-re­place func­tion to search for all in­stances of the straight dou­ble quote (") and re­place it with

the same char­ac­ter—a straight dou­ble quote (").Be­fore you say “that won’t do any­thing”, try it. When your word

proces­sor re­places each quo­ta­tion mark, it also per­forms the straight-to-curly conversion.

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by the wayWe receive lots of grammar and punctuation questions from customers and visitors to our site. This week, I thought I'd post a question we received about quotations along with Phil Jamieson's answer. In coming weeks, I'll post some of the other questions we've received along

with their answers.I hope you

find this helpful!Today's question is from a customer who had questions about changes we made to quotation marks in her

documents.

Question:Is there a difference between using straight quotes (" ") and curved quotes (“ ”)? ProofreadNOW has, in the past, changed my curved quotes to straight, and I’m just wondering why that is (and how to do straight quotes

myself!).

Answer:You can straighten the mark out if you want: as soon as you hit the mark, hit a control-Z and it will be straightened out. That's because the control-z (Microsoft's 'undo' command) undoes the command to make the straight mark curly. Of course if you hit it again, it will remove (undo the typing of) the quote mark itself. (Control-z undoes whatever command was just done. Repeated Control-Z's undo previous commands, one before the

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other.)straight and curly quotesAlways use curly 

quotesStraight quotes are the two generic ver­ti­cal quo­ta­tion marks lo­cated near the re­turn key: the straight sin­gle quote (') and the straight

dou­ble quote (").Curly quotes are the quo­ta­tion marks used in good ty­pog­ra­phy. There are four

curly quote char­ac­ters: the open­ing sin­gle quote (‘), the clos­ing sin­gle quote (’), the open­ing dou­ble quote (“), and the clos­ing dou­ble quote (”).

Windows

Mac OS

HTML

'

straight single quote

'

'

via Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts.~Barb

'

"

straight double quote

"

"

"

‘

opening single quote

alt 0145

option + ]

&lsquo;

’

closing single quote

via Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts.

alt 0146

option + shift + ]

&rsquo;

“

opening double quote

alt 0147

option + [

&ldquo;

”

closing double quote

alt 0148option + shift + [&rdquo;Straight quotes are a type­writer habit. In tra­di­tional print­ing, all quo­ta­tion marks were curly. But type­writer char­ac­ter sets were lim­ited by me­chan­i­cal con­straints and phys­i­cal space. By re­plac­ing the curly

open­ing and clos­ing quotes with am­bidex­trous straight quotes, two slots be­came avail­able for other characters.Word proces­sors are not lim­ited in this way. You can al­ways get curly quotes. Com­pared to straight quotes, curly quotes are more leg­i­ble on the page and match

the other char­ac­ters bet­ter. There­fore, straight quotes should

never, ever ap­pear in your

documents.

"That's a 'magic' shoe."

wrong“That’s a ‘magic’ shoe.”rightFor­tu­nately, avoid­ing straight quotes is easy: use your word The following screenshots

au­to­mat­i­cally. Smart quotes are typ­i­cally turned on by default.

How to turn (first for Latin Modern, then for Times

Roman) demonstrate conclusively that \textquotesingle does produce a straight vertical a straight vertical

quote -- unless, of course, some sans-serif font with in CS6 or

define the shortcuts LikeTranslateTranslateReportCommunity guidelinesBe kind and

respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn moreExplorer ,/t5/indesign-discussions/using-typographer-s-quotes-and-straight-quotes-in-the-same-block-of-text/m-p/10269298#M127380 Dec 08, 2022 Dec 08, 2022

CopiedWell that's even easier, and it works like a charm. Thanks, Barb!

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Adobe Community Professional ,

/t5/indesign-discussions/using-typographer-s-quotes-and-straight-quotes-in-the-same-block-of-text/m-p/10269299#M127381 Dec 09, 2022 Dec 09, 2022CopiedLATESTMixed up my

straight and curlies there!Likes1 LikeTranslateTranslateReportCommunity guidelinesBe kind and respectful, give credit to the original source

of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn morePost Replylang at­tribute (like lang="en") so the q tag knows what kind of curly quotes to use. Sec­ond, this change in markup re­moves the quote marks from the char­ac­ter stream, and doesn’t help with apos­tro­phes, so it may proces­sor’s smart-quote fea­ture, which will sub­sti­tute curly quotes Letting us know the version is important.Those are the

shortcuts for current

versions:but they are not listed for CS6. You can use the Type menu ~BarbLikesbuilt into word

proces­sors for nearly 30 years. That’s why straight quotes are one of the most griev­ous and in­ept ty­po­graphic errors.When you paste or im­port text with straight quotes in

it, your word proces­sor may not al­ways con­vert the straight quotes prop­erly. Fix them.How to convert all quotes to curly quotes• Use the search-and-re­place func­tion to search for all in­stances of the straight sin­gle quote (') and re­place it with

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the same char­ac­ter—a straight sin­gle quote (').

• Use the search-and-re­place func­tion to search for all in­stances of the

straight dou­ble quote (") and re­place it with the same char­ac­ter—a straight dou­ble quote (").Be­fore you say “that won’t do any­thing”, try it. When your word

proces­sor re­places each quo­ta­tion mark, it also per­forms the straight-to-curly conversion.

Curly quotes on the webHTML & CSS have no au­to­matic fa­cil­ity for con­vert­ing straight quotes to curly. But in­sert­ing these char­ac­ters us­ing HTML es­cape codes is dreary.If you use a CMS like Word­Press, plu­g­ins are avail­able that han­dle this au­to­mat­i­cally. There are also Java­Script-based con­vert­ers that work in the browser. If you’re tempted to write your own

\documentclass{article} \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} % access \textquotedbl \usepackage{textcomp} % access \textquotesingle \usepackage{mathptmx} % load "Times New Roman" text font % (note: the "times" package is obsolete!) \begin{document} He exclaimed, \textquotedbl Hello, \textquotesingle Stranger\textquotesingle.\textquotedbl \end{document}

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straight-to-curly con­verter, re­con­sider—the good ones

cover tricky edge cases that you’re apt to miss on your own.An­other op­tion is to use the lit­tle-known q tag, which au­to­mat­i­cally ap­pends curly quotes

This claim simply cannot be correct in general. As \textquotesingle is defined in the textcomp package but not the LaTeX kernel, \textquotesingle without textcomp produces an error message, not a curly closing quote.

or offversions:but they are not listed for CS6. You can use the Type menu quote. In contrast, \textsf{'} does not produce in CS6 or define the shortcuts PagesEdit → Substitutions → check or uncheck Smart QuotesSmart-quote sub­sti­tu­tion has been

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fixed by adapt­ing the search-and-re­place tech­nique de­scribed above.• Quo­ta­tion marks are an area of vast ty­po­graphic di­ver­sity among other

lan­guages—both the glyphs

used and how

they’re spaced. Now you know

why quote-curl­ing al­go­rithms have to be smart.• Con­fi­den­tial to com­puter sci­en­tists and doc­u­men­ta­tion writ­ers: straight quotes and back­ticks in soft­ware code should never be con­verted to curly quotes. Those marks are, of course, part of the code syn­tax and must be re­pro­duced lit­er­ally. In par­tic­u­lar, though fans of La­TeX have of­ten writ­ten me to trum­pet its type­set­ting su­pe­ri­or­ity, I’ve never seen

any La­TeX-cre­ated doc­u­men­ta­tion that’s got­ten this right.You writeI ... just [want to] get the occasional straight quote.

The typographically correct marks for "feet" and "inches" are not (single or double, resp.) straight quote marks, but angled quote marks. These may be

produced in "normal LaTeX" via $'$ and $''$, resp.AddendumHere, then, is a quick MWE. Note that the text font is TNR (Times New Roman). If your publisher wants to use a font encoding other than T1 -- which is what I use in the MWE -- that's no problem at all, as long as

your publisher's template doesn't impose OT1...

Second Addendum

\textquotesingle (with or without

textcomp) produces a curly

closing quote, not the straight

quote I need

for a short

C fragment.

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1 Correct answer

Adobe Community Professional , Dec 08, 2022 Dec 08, 2022

smart quotes on WordFile → Options → Proofing → AutoCorrect Options → AutoFormat As You Type → check or uncheck "Straight Quotes" with “Smart Quotes”Mac OS WordWord → Preferences → AutoCorrect → AutoFormat As You Type → check or uncheck "Straight Quotation Marks" with “Smart Quotation Marks”ac­cents (``). (The grave ac­cent, also some­times called a back­tick, is that char­ac­ter above the tab key you’ve never used.) These can be

Using typographer's quotes and

straight quotes in

the same block

of text

Explorer ,

/t5/indesign-discussions/using-typographer-s-quotes-and-straight-quotes-in-the-same-block-of-text/td-p/10269294 Dec 07, 2022 Dec 07, 2022Copied

I would like

to be able

to use both

straight and "curly" quotes within the

same sentence or

paragraph without having

to go into

the app preferences

change it, type the text, go in and change it again, etc.Typical example of a sentence I would need to

do this for:

The IRT's platforms are

510' long, and each car

is 51'5". Can I create a character style that forces straight quotes when the default setting is typographer's quotes? I would say I need straight quotes maybe 5% of the time (if that), but when I need them, creating them is

a royal pain. Even copying-pasting doesn't work as

the pasted versions

are curly.

Thanks in advance.

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Adobe Community Professional ,

/t5/indesign-discussions/using-typographer-s-quotes-and-straight-quotes-in-the-same-block-of-text/m-p/10269297#M127379 Dec 08, 2022 Dec 08, 2022

Copied

Letting us know the version is important.

Those are the shortcuts for current be a long

drive for a short day at the beach.by the way• Some older dig­i­tal doc­u­ments are stored with dou­ble quotes made of two sin­gle quotes (' ') or two grave

straight single quote

glyphs has been

loaded.

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5 RepliesAdobe Community Professional ,/t5/indesign-discussions/using-typographer-s-quotes-and-straight-quotes-in-the-same-block-of-text/m-p/10269295#M127377 Dec 07, 2022 Dec 07, 2022Copied

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respectful, give credit to

the original source

of content, and search for

duplicates before posting. Learn more

Explorer ,/t5/indesign-discussions/using-typographer-s-quotes-and-straight-quotes-in-the-same-block-of-text/m-p/10269296#M127378 Dec 08, 2022 Dec 08, 2022CopiedUnfortunately this does not seem to

work for me (holding down the

control key and

the left square-bracket simultaneously, or control and

right square-bracket, or control, shift, etc). None of those

combinations work using ID CS6 on a PC running

Windows 10.

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