What’s the Difference Between Straight and Curly Quotation Marks?
Much like the shape of french fries, there is a choice between straight ("") and curly (“”) quotation marks (no waffle or shoestring quotation marks to confuse the issue even more). Funnily enough, while they look different, they don’t differ in their meaning, as straight and curly quotation marks serve
an identical grammatical purpose. However, they do cause some issues when it comes to typography and now computers, and thanks to modern computer programmers, straight quotes started to be called “dumb” and curly quotation marks were called “smart.” Here’s how they acquired those reputations. Curly quotation marks were preferred by...
