Smart quotes are called smart because they depend on a type of artificial intelligence known as autocorrect. (They’re also the ones you’ll need if you’re typing code.) But for your published work, you’ll probably want the curly versions. The straight marks are fine for correspondence and social media and the like. This all-purpose character has three roles: apostrophe, left single quotation mark, and right single quotation mark. Instead, what you can normally expect to get when you press the apostrophe key is a generic straight mark. So there’s no separate key for the left single quotation mark. QWERTY and other keyboard layouts reserve one rather than two keys for the single quotation mark and apostrophe. The straight marks are easier to use because there’s only one kind. (Left and right quotation marks are also known as opening and closing quotation marks.) Straight Quotes With these curly marks (as we’ll see) it’s important to remember that an apostrophe is not the same character as a left single quotation mark. When they are used, they are normally reserved for quotations within quotations, “as ‘shown’ here.”† (Quotation marks, double or single, always come in pairs.) In Chicago and other styles that use double quotation marks, single quotation marks are rare.
When this same character is being used as a right single quotation mark, it’s paired with its twin, the left single quotation mark. The apostrophe’s other main role is to form possessives (as it does at the beginning of this sentence). In other words, a curly apostrophe and a right single curly quotation mark are the same thing.Īs you’ve seen throughout this post, apostrophes help to form contractions.
SMART TYPER CODE
The official Unicode name for the curly type of apostrophe is “right single quotation mark.” As the relevant code chart explains, “this is the preferred character to use for apostrophe.”* In a moment we’ll see why smart apostrophes aren’t always very smart. Straight apostrophes, on the other hand, are what you normally get when smart quotes aren’t enabled. Smart apostrophes are the marks you’ll see in this paragraph and throughout this post.
In word processors you will probably get them by default, thanks to a feature called smart quotes. Smart apostrophes, also known as curly or typographer’s apostrophes, are the professional-looking marks preferred by most publishers.
To use them correctly, it helps to know how they work. There are two different kinds of apostrophes: smart and straight.
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