Choosing the right quotes

Lately I read this great posting on webdesignerdepot.com. I especially liked one detail mentioned under Don’t Neglect The Details. It said Use smart quotes and described how to use the right quotes that look nice, instead of that ugly stuff that on your keyboard. In my humble opinion, it should read Care about quotes or Use the right quotes instead of Use smart quotes, however, I have to add more to this. This don't stops here, it's harder then that. There are also differences in the quoting rules of different languages and since I'm german, I know that one.

See the following examples. The first uses the quotes on the keyboard, the second uses the Unicode entities 8220 and 8221 for correct english quoting and the third uses 8222 and 8220 for the german version:

"this is dumb quoted"

“english should be quoted like this”

„deutsche Anführungszeichen“

The thing about these kind of details is, that one don't cares about, if he don't know it, but as soon as he knows, it starts to bug him. Do this right and you are on the save site.

PS: jep, I know, my english isn't perfect and arguing about such details might seem silly... but I'm working on this :)