Open any published novel and look at a line of dialogue. The quotation marks curl: an opening pair that looks like a tiny 66, a closing pair like a 99. The apostrophes curl the same way. Those are smart quotes, also called curly, typographic or typographer's quotes.
Now look at the same line in a text file, a code editor, or a manuscript that
has been pasted between programs a few times. The marks are straight ticks:
" and '. Those are straight quotes, and they are the single most
common thing that makes a self-published book look unset.
What the difference is
Straight quotes are a typewriter compromise. A typewriter had one key for both
the opening and the closing mark, so it had one straight glyph that did both
jobs. Computers inherited the key, and with it the character — " is the
ASCII quotation mark, ' the ASCII apostrophe.
Typeset books never used them. Type has four separate characters, and each is a real glyph in the font:
| Mark | Character | Unicode |
|---|---|---|
| Opening double | “ | U+201C |
| Closing double | ” | U+201D |
| Opening single | ‘ | U+2018 |
| Closing single, and the apostrophe | ’ | U+2019 |
The apostrophe is the closing single quote. They are the same character, which is the root of the one mistake even good software makes — below.
Where straight quotes come from
Word converts quotes as you type. So does Google Docs, so does Scrivener, so does almost any program meant for prose. If your manuscript has straight quotes, one of these happened:
- Text was pasted in from somewhere that does not convert — an email, a text file, a note app, a web form, a code editor. Autocorrect only fires on keystrokes; it does not touch pasted text.
- The setting was off. Word's AutoCorrect has a "straight quotes with smart quotes" option; Google Docs has "Use smart quotes" under Tools → Preferences. Someone turned it off, or a template did.
- The file was converted. Exporting to plain text, to Markdown, or through a converter that strips anything outside ASCII, turns every curly mark straight. So does some OCR.
- Find-and-replace with the setting off. Replacing a word can leave the replacement's quotes straight while the rest of the sentence curls.
The result is usually a mix — most of the book curly, one pasted chapter straight — which is worse than either, because it is visible.
The apostrophe every autocorrect gets wrong
Autocorrect decides which way a mark should curl by looking at what is before it. A quote after a space or at the start of a line is opening; a quote after a letter is closing. This is right almost every time.
It is wrong whenever an apostrophe starts a word:
the ’90s — ’tis — rock ’n’ roll — ’cause — fish ’n’ chips
Each of those apostrophes stands for missing letters, so it is a closing mark (’), curling the same way as the one in don’t. But it comes after a space, so autocorrect makes it an opening one (‘). Word does this. Google Docs does this. Our own converter does this, for the same reason: nothing in the surrounding characters says which is meant.
The fix is to type the right character directly — on a Mac, Option-Shift-]
gives ’; on Windows, Alt+0146 — or to search the finished file for ‘9,
‘t, ‘n, ‘c and correct by hand. A novel has a handful of these. Worth
five minutes.
The other one: inches and feet
6" and 5'10" are not quotes; they are the prime (′) and double prime (″),
the marks for feet and inches, minutes and seconds. Autocorrect turns them into
closing quotes, which is at least not an opening quote, but is still the wrong
glyph. Most readers will never notice. Set them properly if the book is about
anything measured.
Converting a whole manuscript
You do not need to fix quotes one at a time.
In Word: make sure AutoCorrect's smart quotes option is on, then
Find and Replace " with " — the same character in both boxes. Because the
replacement passes through AutoCorrect, every straight double quote is
re-inserted as the correct curly one. Do the same with '. Then check the
leading apostrophes above.
In Google Docs: turn on "Use smart quotes", then use Find and Replace the same way.
Here: every formatter on this site runs the manuscript through a
typography pass before it sets anything. Straight double and single quotes
become curly ones by position, -- becomes an em dash, three dots become a
real ellipsis. A mark that is already right is left alone — so a manuscript
that is mostly correct is not disturbed. The pass has the same blind spot as
Word for a leading apostrophe, so a ’90s still wants a look. It reports what
it changed.
Does it matter in an ebook?
Yes, and slightly more. On a Kindle the reader chooses the typeface, and every Kindle font draws proper curly marks; a straight tick in the middle of a page of them stands out at any size. It also affects search inside the book — don't and don’t are different strings — which is a reason to be consistent even if you did not care how it looked.
The short version
- Books use curly quotes and apostrophes. Straight ones are a typewriter leftover.
- Straight quotes come from pasting, from a setting turned off, or from a conversion through plain text.
- Fix a manuscript in one pass with Find and Replace, not by hand.
- Then check the apostrophes that start a word: ’90s, ’tis, rock ’n’ roll. Every converter, including ours, curls them the wrong way.