Who stole my quote marks?

We are all used to seeing correct quotation marks in books and newspapers (well at least I hope we are). However, when it comes to websites, all of a sudden we are treated to “dumb quotes” or “straight quotes”. When asking why, the response I receive is “they are not in the font” or a more appropriate answer is that people don’t actually know how to enter these quotation marks on their computer and that it is possible to do so in Acrobat Reader or in a blog post or even on Facebook.

Before we try and solve the problem, it’s perhaps useful to take a brief historical look at how these, and other typographical marks were actually dealt with.

History

When mechanical typewriters were developed, their mechanisms and limited number of keys imposed practical constraints. For our purposes, the important limitation was the small number of punctuation marks available on the keyboard.

A decision was made to include only one ' for the open and close quote mark (and of course apostrophe) and only one " for double quotation marks. The single ' (which we’ll refer to as a straight quote for convenience) also doubled (along with backspacing with a full stop/period) as an exclamation point. The same with dashes. The single hyphen had to do in place of the common different dashes, namely the hyphen, en-dash and em-dash as well as the minus sign.

Typesetting

When a typewritten manuscript was sent for typesetting, since the manuscript was in any case being rekeyed in professionally, it would be up to the typesetter to enter the correct quotation marks, dashes etc.

Computers

When the first computer keyboards were being designed, there were plenty of keys but they were being designed for programming and it wasn’t necessary when coding to have open and closed quotation marks. In fact, that would only increase the chance of a syntax error.

Apple

It is straightforward to enter typographic quotation marks and dashes on a Mac once you know the shortcuts. These depend on the selected keyboard layout; Keyboard Viewer shows the characters available with Option and Shift–Option. The examples below show one layout:

Perhaps not exactly intuitive right but on the Mac it’s easy to access all sorts of characters from the keyboard very easily. Here is an excellent post on all the characters.

Windows

However, on Windows it’s even less intuitive.

If you hold down Alt and type the appropriate four-digit code on a numeric keypad, Windows can insert many special characters. The result depends on the application and keyboard setup; Character Map is another way to find and copy them.

Actually, Windows Character Map lets you inspect the characters available in a font and copy the one you need. For some characters it also shows an Alt code. In the image below, the multiplication sign × is shown with Alt+0215; it is a different character from the letter x.

Now for those of you who have made it this far down must be thinking surely there is an easier way.

Easier way?

Well, there are a few good options: You could buy a Mac :-) However, if like me, you are sticking to Windows, then if you are using software like Microsoft Word then there is an option for automatically replacing “straight quotes” with “smart quotes” – Word’s nomenclatures for typographer’s quotes. Actually, be careful, they are not so smart – try typing ’70s rather than ‘70s (look closely and you will see that Word will incorrectly type an open quote before the number 7 rather than an apostrophe). Even double hyphens will be replaced with a dash.

However, what if you need to enter the actual character in a PDF correction? A note saying “reverse quote mark” is less precise than supplying the intended mark. Alt codes may help on Windows, but a character picker, text expander or suitable custom keyboard layout can be easier.

Text Expander

There are text expander programs such as PhraseExpress which can be very useful. For example, I have set it up so that if I type the letter ‘x’ three times in a row, it gives me the multiplication symbol ×.

Custom Keyboard

Another solution requires a bit more effort, but the results are definitely worth it, and that is to create your own custom keyboard. You can download from Microsoft a free tool called the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. With this tool you can create your own keyboards which you can then install into Windows. So, I programmed my ALT-RIGHT key followed by ( to be my open quote and with the ) to be my closed quote, adding SHIFT for double quotes. As a typesetter, this makes it easier if I have to type special characters such as an ḥ (h dot) which I programmed as ALT-RIGHT-h.

The advantage of a text expander or customised keyboard is that it can make the same characters available across many applications. Check that it works with your operating system and the program in which you mark up PDFs or write your posts.

If you want a copy of the above keyboard for Windows, email me and I’ll send it to you with compliments.

If you have a manuscript that needs typesetting then please drop us a line.

And finally, if you have another useful solution, please share it in the comments section below.