Smart Quotes Converter

There are two kinds of quotation marks. Straight quotes (” and ’) come from the typewriter and are what keyboards type. Typographic or “smart” quotes (“ ” ‘ ’) curve towards the quoted text and are what books, newspapers and well-set websites use. Word processors convert as you type, but text written in plain editors, chat apps, CMS fields or Markdown often ends up with straight quotes — or with a mix. This converter turns straight quotes into correct typographic ones in eight language styles, and converts the other way for code and data.

How quotes are chosen

A double quote is an opening mark when it follows the start of a line, a space, a bracket or a dash, and a closing mark when it follows a word or punctuation. Single quotes need more care, because the same key types the apostrophe: a mark between letters is an apostrophe (don’t, O’Brien), a mark before two digits is an apostrophe for a shortened year (the ’90s), and marks in common elisions such as ’tis, rock ’n’ roll and ’em are apostrophes too. Anything else becomes an opening or closing single quote.

Language styles

Quotation marks differ by language. English uses “ ” with ‘ ’ inside; British publishers often reverse that. German uses „low and high“, French uses « guillemets » with a narrow no-break space inside, Swiss usage omits that space, Polish uses „ ”, Swedish uses ” on both sides, and Japanese uses 「」 with 『』 for quotes within quotes. Choose a style and both levels of quotation follow it; apostrophes are always ’.

Feet, inches and code

Measurements such as 5’10” should use primes (′ and ″), not quotation marks; the primes option handles digits followed by quote marks. Code must keep straight quotes, so text in backticks and fenced code blocks is skipped by default — useful for Markdown documents and technical writing.

Back to straight quotes

Programming languages, JSON, CSV files and many command-line tools need straight quotes. Converting typographic quotes, guillemets, Japanese brackets and primes back to “ and ’ fixes code copied from a word processor or a website and data that fails to parse.

A worked example

The sample line ““Don’t worry,” she said, “it’s only 5’10” tall.“” becomes “Don’t worry,” she said, “it’s only 5′10″ tall.” — opening and closing quotes in the right places, apostrophes in the contractions and primes for the height — while the print("hello") code in backticks keeps its straight quotes.

Ambiguous cases

A quote that opens in the middle of a word, or a closing single quote after a plural possessive (the students’ books), follows the rules above but can occasionally be read the other way. Skim the result for those cases before publishing.

Workflow tips

Convert quotes as one of the last steps before publishing, after all other edits, so new text does not reintroduce straight quotes. Keep source files for code and data with straight quotes, and convert only the copy that readers will see. When pasting into a CMS, check that it does not convert quotes again itself.

Related tools

Fix dashes, ellipses and symbols too with the Typography Fixer, straighten quotes along with other clean-up in the Text Cleaner, find unusual spaces with the Whitespace Visualizer, or change words in bulk with Find and Replace.