: Manuscript format: Straight or curly quotation marks? I'm writing (or at least trying to write) a novel, and using standard manuscript format: 12-point Courier, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, etc.

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I just finished the design handbook Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton. In it she says that prime or hatch marks (straight quotes) should only be used to indicate inches and feet (e.g., 5'7"). Always use curly quotes (aka typographer's quotes, or smart quotes) for quotation marks and apostrophes.

In fact, she says the use of straight quotes, for anything other than feet and inches, is a type crime.

Edit: The book also says writer's needn't spend hours worrying about design, they should leave it to the designers.

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Check the manuscript guidelines of where you're submitting. Anything else is a personal style preference.

Some manuscript guidelines require straight quotes, some ask for curly quotes throughout. In general, short fiction tends to require straight quotes (particularly when submitted in the body of an email, or pasted into a web form) and novels tend to need curly quotes. (The same issues usually apply to apostrophes and em dashes.)

The easiest way to handle this is probably to write with curly quotes turned on. It's a simple matter to use a text editor to turn them into straight quotes; doing it the other way around can be a little more complicated and prone to error.

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I know of two widely cited descriptions of standard manuscript format, one from William Shunn and the other from Vonda M. McIntyre.

Neither description explicitly mentions the style of quotation marks. But each description is itself an example of the manuscript format it describes. Shunn's uses straight quotes. I think McIntyre's uses curly quotes (the opening and closing quotation marks differ).

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