User:HTGS/curly

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Should Wikipedia, via the Manual of Style, recommend for or against “curly” quotes? Currently MOS:CURLY says no.

The Manual of Style’s guidance for straight quotes was begun in 2004. We are currently in a different era. The old issues of search engines, users’ display options, browsers’ find functions and even problems with typing these characters have largely disappeared. Searching for quote marks is a non-issue, on or off Wikipedia. Many people are editing from devices that automatically add curly quotes, and reverting to straight quotes can be more of a pain than typing curly is for other users.

Note on vocabulary

The marks that look like “this” or ‘that’ are variously called curly, smart, typographer’s or curved quotes. Those that look like "this" and 'that' are usually called straight, dumb or typewriter quotes. Beware the false friend, typesetter’s quotes, which refers to punctuation set inside of a quote. (See MOS:LOGICAL.)

For a neutral point of view, and to avoid confusion, it’s best to use curly and straight to discuss them.

Why should we use curly marks?

Many people who support curly marks say that these are the “correct” symbols. This is supported by style guides and the majority of sources that address the question. Arguments in favor of straight marks on Wikipedia do not typically suggest that straight marks are better per se; arguments around them usually focus on whether they are feasible.

The distinction between the two sets of marks can be distilled down to which is easier for the writer, and which is easier for the reader. Both can be found in the wild, so it’s worth exploring which set of marks is preferable, especially in the context of an editable encyclopedia, where we cater to both readers and writers (editors).

  • Aesthetics and typographic standard. Published documents use curly quotes and apostrophes, and as a result sophisticated readers treat these as the “correct” marks.
  • This standard is confirmed by design, publishing and typographic sources on the matter, who almost universally recommend typographer’s quotes over typewriter quotes. As we follow real-world standards and usage where we can, it would be unusual to avoid outside best-practices without good reason.
  • The two curly quote marks are directional, and therefore semantic. Like parentheses they provide information to the reader about where a quote is ending and beginning.
  • Similarly, apostrophes are used differently depending on context. Readers who might be unsure of how to typeset unusual contractions like Rock 'n' roll or Man o' war can check Wikipedia as they do for many other facts.
  • This directional nature gives an ease of readability, including for accessibility reasons. (For example, anecdotally, people with dyslexia say they benefit from asymmetric symbols).
  • Confirmation that while we are maintaining a living document meant to be edited, we are also putting out a published document meant to be read and one that should aspire to a finished standard. Philosophically this is also an assertion that the reader comes first.
  • The curly characters are always content characters, and are never used as part of MediaWiki markup, HTML markup or any other computer language.
  • Because of this, human editors are better able to visually distinguish curly quotes for content from straight quotes for code. This makes reading and editing source code easier.
  • Similarly, distinguishing content from code makes it easier for the MediaWiki interpreter to parse, removing the need for constructions like <nowiki>'</nowiki> or templates like {{`}}.

Less serious reasons to support curly quotes include:

  • If the German Wikipedia can do it, so can we!
  • This is part of the gay agenda. We are here to remove all things straight.
  • More opportunities to describe stuff with sixes and nines.

Why do we not?

On the question of curly quotes and apostrophes the MOS currently recommends against them (Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotation characters), and gives two reasons to avoid them. A third reason: the difficulty or awkwardness of change, is often raised in talk page discussions.

Curly quotes are harder to type

Straight quotation marks and apostrophes are easier to type reliably on most platforms.

In most editing environments curly quotes and curly apostrophe characters are difficult to type. A user must pull up the special character menu in the editing environment, be able to type the characters using their keyboard, or use a separate editing environment before copying text into their browser.

Curly quotes make searches unpredictable

While historically it seems that some people were concerned about the ability of readers to search out a given article using external search engines (eg, Google) or MediaWiki’s internal search function, this seems to be less of a concern at present. (Formerly it seems search engines also had trouble with dashes and other typographic marks.discussion I have not investigated further.)

The MOS currently puts emphasis on the ability to “find” within a browser:

Consistency keeps searches predictable. Though most browsers treat curly and straight quotation marks interchangeably, Internet Explorer does not (as of 2016), so a search for Alzheimer's disease will fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa.

This is now true for only one “major” browser: Internet Explorer, and year-to-date, IE has represented <1% of all traffic to desktop Wikimedia sites, and this appears to still be dropping.[1] On Usage share of web browsers, IE is now lumped in with “other”. These stats are measured in part “to support decisions by our engineers and product owners”.[2]

It seems likely that serious researchers will be using modern browsers, but even for those few users on IE whom this affects, the nature of this specific search type is so unusual that the number of people affected will not be significant enough to dictate MOS guidance.

Change is hard

A large portion of concern in previous discussions has been raised about the likelihood of inconsistency and messy articles using both styles of quote marks. Edit-warring between styles is a common concern, and one of the big reasons for the MOS to prefer one style, rather than allowing multiple.

A change of this magnitude can be off-putting in itself. In previous discussions, editors disliked the idea of articles being in disarray, mixing styles within a single document. But Wikipedia is not a place for people who hate change. So long as we can provide guidance for a clear and hippocratic mode of transition, it should be harmless. The best way to transition these marks is outlined below (§ How to transition Wikipedia from straight to curly quotes).

How to insert smart quotes

There are many ways to insert smart quote characters, and each might suit a different situation. For example a user on Windows might find that when creating a new article from scratch it is easiest to type it out in a word processor and then copy into Wikipedia’s . An editor adding a simple quote to an article might just copy and paste the symbols from elsewhere in the article. Someone wanting to change straight quotes to smart quotes throughout a lengthy article might use regex substitution but use substituted templates ({{subst:rdquo}}, {{subst:ldquo}}) to ensure the changes are easy to see before publishing.

Most methods are listed here:

  1. Click to insert symbols in the menu bar. In Vector’s visual editor this is done by the symbol menu (Ω), under Symbols, where double quote marks are insertable as a pair. These can easily be added to other editing tools by request following consensus here (eg, at MediaWiki talk:Edittools).
  2. Type characters in using keystrokes. This option is fairly accessible for Mac, much harder for Windows. See Keystrokes below.
  3. Type in the html code (eg: &rdquo; for the ” symbol—the right double quote).
  4. Insert a template functioning as the same (eg: {{rdquo}}, with alias {{r"}} ).
  5. Use templates {{inline quote double}} and {{inline quote single}} which encompass a quote, creating curly quote marks around the text. (Aliases: {{in"}} and {{in'}} respectively.) For example:
    {{in"|This is a quote}}
    “This is a quote”
    {{in"|This is {{in'|a quote}} within a quote}}
    “This is ‘a quote’ within a quote”
  6. Copy and paste the symbols from other pages or places within a document.
  7. Edit in a secondary app, such as Microsoft Word, then copy in all changes at once.
  8. In future, an optional user tool can generate smart quotes as you write. These are relatively easy to implement as Javascript (see this existing plugin for Chrome). Obviously these tools would avoid correcting double and triple straight quotes ( '', ''' ) and could be turned on and off. Asking for a tool like this will be easier at the point that the MOS prefers curly quotes.
  9. This type of tool could later be implemented as back-end changes for all users. This would function similarly to typing content at Medium or Quora.

Keystrokes

On Windows Num Lock ⇩ must be active. Hold the Alt key while typing the four-digit character code on the numeric keypad:

  • Alt+0145 produces a left single quote ( ‘ )
  • Alt+0146 produces a right single quote ( ’ )
  • Alt+0147 produces a left double quote ( “ )
  • Alt+0148 produces a right double quote ( ” )

On Mac:

  • ⌥ Option+] produces a left single quote ( ‘ )
  • ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+] produces a right single quote ( ’ )
  • ⌥ Option+[ produces a left double quote ( “ )
  • ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+[ produces a right double quote ( ” )

For Linux it will depend on the system, but many solutions are covered here: [3]

How to transition Wikipedia from straight to curly quotes

Many people who might prefer curly quotes in a general sense are averse to the various modes of transition. While many editors are rightfully wary of options like “Allow both styles as a compromise”—which would lead to mixed styles and a much messier looking encyclopedia—and “Change all quotes using bots”—which could lead to messing up integral markup (italics and bold styles implemented using '' and ''').

A middle ground that plans for an unhasty but deliberate change is the best course. That is, guidance at WP:CURLY would read:

Use “curly” quotation marks, not "straight" ones. (For single apostrophe quotes: ‘curly’, not 'straight'.)
Curly quotation marks are now prefered.[See consensus.] Editors should not make haphazard changes that result in an article mixing styles. Do not shift straight quotes to curly quotes in a manner that could be disruptive. When deliberately changing straight marks to curly, leave a link in your edit summary to MOS:CURLYTRANSITION.

This allows the gnomes to do the work of changing articles as they wish, but maintaining an internal consistency to articles, while still unambiguously supporting one style over the other. The reader should be un-jarred (and probably won’t even notice), and editors should find the changes minimally intrusive to their watchlists.

Should we wish to allow bots, we can do so at a later point, with the full oversight that bots always require.

Users will no doubt ask questions like “if an article consistently uses straight quotes, should I use curly or straight to add a new quote?” or “A user just changed half the quotes in an article to straight quotes, should I revert them?”. These aren’t complicated problems though; at the end of the day, we have a clear outcome to aim for.


0. Require straight quotes, with bots and users correcting smart quotes wherever they pop up.

1. Allow both within an article, requiring consistency within a given sentence or paragraph.

2. Allow any article to use either, with no preference, similar to international spelling differences between articles

3. Allow either as a gentle transition, but recommend smart quotes.

4. Transition to smart quotes, but without bots or any major automation.

5. Transition with use of bots and automation (deliberately and with sensible precautions)

Previous discussions

  • Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 3#Quotation marks: New policy proposal 22 Sep 2004 For uniformity and to avoid complications use straight quotation marks and apostrophes, not curved (smart) ones or grave accents
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