Perhaps the most frequently misunderstood element of web development is character sets and, in particular, quotes. Devs, editors, and writers love to blame anyone and anything – Microsoft, Word, RSS, the WYSIWYG – for their quote woes. They throw around terms like “curly quotes”,“smart quotes” and “Microsoft quotes” – as if they were foreign, mystical characters, rather than boring, everyday UTF characters. But here are the true facts about quotes:
- 99% of the time, one should never use ‘ and “ in the content of a blog post or article.
- If you’re quoting someone, then you should use quotation marks – that is, “ and ”
- To borrow from Richard Rutter and Mark Boulton, if a rag like The Sun can get this right, you should be able to as well.
- This has absolutely nothing to do with HTML entities
- That is to say, quotation marks (both single and double) are their own UTF characters. And thus, they don’t need to be turned into HTML entities. Just treat them like an ‘a’ or a ‘z’.
- They can be typed – easily – from any standard keyboard. See http://quotesandaccents.com/ and http://practicaltypography.com/straight-and-curly-quotes.html
- In short, it’s easier and much, much, much more correct to use proper quotes.
- Case closed.