It’s kind of hard to say because when coding, straight quotes are a different character (ASCII-wise) than curly quotes - curlies are two different characters. Usually you always want to use straight quotes for coding.
I also get annoyed when the “replace straight quotes with curly quotes” is enabled in word processors because inevitably somehow it’s going to get stuck curling the quotes the wrong way. Word95 back in the day seemed like it curled the quotes forward first, then the second pair back and that stuck even if you edited the text or added in more quotes in between. (Until now testing below, I hadn’t realized this forum does curly quotes, but it seems to pair them intelligently instead of just guessing.)
Once the text is set up for layout or display, then curly quotes are usually appropriate to use or not per the font styling so they blend in as part of the regular text aesthetically. The decision to use curly quotes or not is decided by the interpreter (or potentially CSS in browser) after the fact.
I think whether this forum changes them or not depends on your theme/browser/system font properties.
“test” sha’n’t ‘variable’ “Please don’t push the Mastermind’s button,” she cried.
monospace ' " "'Carpe Diem' Caesar said," recalled Antony.
On here, I’ve never noticed nor thought about it as it’s never caused a problem, and we have code-markers to make everything monospace when necessary. The forum seems to be doing it more intelligently than I remember with older software like Word95.
So my answer is I don’t have a preference if the text looks good, but I’m going to use straight quotes when producing text that is intended to be styled or interpreted later.
Straight all the way.
I spent too long in the ASCII-only world to be bothered with those fancy unicode things. I get extremely annoyed when my perfectly working code gets mangled by something (I’m looking at you Apple) into something other than what I typed.
I always use straight quotes, although given that my IF has a lot of dialogue designated as such by code rather than by quotation mark, it is an issue less often than one might think.
Straight quotes are reliably picked up by even the oldest screenreaders (although I suspect the curly quote issue was fixed many ago, I’ve been computing long enough to have been around when it was a problem) and Ren’Py requires less coding to recognise what I’m doing (where possible, I write directly into the code rather than using a third-party program such as Word or even Notepad). They also lend themselves to a sans-serif presentation, which is currently popular. However, in translations I accept translator judgement for how to present the text (apart from anything else, the Ren’Py extra coding element only applies to the language in which the IF is originally written).
‘Tis the season for the very common error of using a left single quotation mark instead of an apostrophe.
“Smart” quotes. Ha!
Curly or slanty, I’m all for distinctive quotation marks (and apostrophes) that have a little direction to them, but only if they’re used correctly. Otherwise, give me good ol' "dribble quotes."
Incorrect usage is especially hilariousannoying in television shows and movies set before the dawn of WYSIWYG word processors. Neither Jimmy Carter nor Gerald Ford ever had ‘76 on a campaign poster—it would have been ’76 or maybe '76.
The apostrophe is one of the most overloaded characters in the ASCII character set. Not only is it used as an apostrophe, but also as a single quotation mark, an acute accent, a symbol for feet, a prime modifier in mathematics.
Most peeps seem to prefer straight when writing (and coding, because duh you’d get errors), and are ambivalent/prefer straight too when reading (through there was a curly preference at the start of the poll)…
and embarrassing typos everywhere on that OG post… sigh…
Not what I expected, tbh, so thanks yall for your input!
